Charles Graner
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Charles A. Graner.Jr (born 10 november 1968) is a former member of the U.S. Army Reserve c who was convicted of prisoner abuse in connection with the 2003–2004 Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. Graner, with other soldiers from his unit, the 372nd Military Police Company, was accused of allowing and inflicting sexual, physical, and psychological abuse on Iraqi prisoners of war in Abu Ghraib prison, a notorious prison in Baghdad during the United States occupation of Iraq.
In 1998, a prisoner accused Graner and three other guards of planting a razor blade in his food, which made him bleed and ate it.
Graner and four other guards were accused of hitting another prisoner who had deliberately flooded his cell, and telling a Muslim prisoner that he had rubbed pork on his entire tray of food.
Birth and early life edit
His parents, Brian and Giorgina Jean Graner, still live in his childhood home.[citation needed] Friends recall "Chuck," as Graner was known, as a "desperate virgin" at Whittier High School, interested in art and drama. In high school, Graner was a member of the Student Council, Student Council Executive Board, Drama Club and Math League. John Castaneda, a family friend for 30 years, was quoted as saying:
- "I feel so bad. He was a real good guy. I have nothing but good things to say about Chuck. Never once did Chuck give anyone a problem. It was always 'Yes, sir' or 'No, sir.' He wouldn't even call my wife and me by our first names. It was always 'Mr.' and 'Mrs.'"
After graduating in 1986, Graner attended the University of La Verne for two years before dropping out to join the U.S. Marines in April 1988 and had the Marine eagle emblem and the letters "USMC" tattooed on his buttocks. In June 1990, he married Alicia Q. Donahue in Downey, California. Trained as a military police officer, he served in the Persian Gulf War in 1991. He was in the Marines until May 1996, when he left with the rank of Lance Corporal.
Allegations of misconduct in Pennsylvanian prisons edit
After his marriage, he moved to Butler, a coal mining area of 12,500 people in southwestern Pennsylvania, where his wife's family resided. From 1990 to 1994, he worked as a school custodian. In 1994, he began working as a guard during the afternoon shift at Fayette County Prison. The Washington Post remarked: "Unlike the night shift, which was typically sleepy, or the morning shift, which was busy with prisoner transfers to court hearings, the afternoon shift had a no-nonsense reputation."
Here, Graner played a practical joke on Robert Tajc, a new guard, by putting mace in his coffee [2]. No disciplinary action was taken against Graner during his employment at the county jail.
Starting on May 17, 1996 (some sources say May 20), Graner worked at State Correctional Institution-Greene, a maximum-security state prison in Greene County. The Los Angeles Times described the prison: It was built for 1,500 of Pennsylvania's hardest-core prisoners, including about 985 on death row, and had the perks of modern corrections, such as central air conditioning and cable TV. But it was not immune from the age-old tensions of such institutions. While almost 98% of the inmates were black, many from big cities, SCI-Greene was in a rural part of the state near the West Virginia border, and more than 95% of the guards were white.
In the state prison, several allegations involve Graner. The first occurred on July 29, 1998, Horatio Nimley, convicted of perjury, was eating mashed potatoes when his mouth started bleeding and he spat out a razor blade. According to a May 1999 federal lawsuit brought by Nimley against Graner, five other guards, and the prison nursing supervisor, Graner first planted the blade in his potatoes, ignored him, and finally brought him to the nurse, where they punched, kicked, and slammed Nimley on the floor. Nimley also alleges that when he screamed, "Stop, stop," Graner told him, "Shut up, nigger, before we kill you."
Graner denies these allegations. A federal magistrate in Pittsburgh, however, ruled that the charges have "arguable merit in fact and law." However, when Nimley was released from prison in 2000, he disappeared, and the case was dismissed, leaving much of what happened still in question. Nimley is now in Graterford prison in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, for burglary.
A second lawsuit involving Graner was brought by a prisoner who claimed that guards made him stand on one foot while handcuffed and tripped him. This allegation, however, was ruled to have been made too late.
During his time at Greene, Graner was connected with several incidents of a violent nature. The Washington Post reported that "abuse allegations had become common at Greene ... Guards beat prisoners, spit in their food, showered them with racial epithets and wrote 'KKK' in one beaten prisoner's blood. The allegations weren't without merit: In 1998, two dozen guards were fired, suspended, demoted or reprimanded." A prison spokesman said none of the allegations involved Graner.
Nick Yarris, a former inmate who was recently released after DNA tests cleared him of rape and murder charges, spent 22 years on Death Row in SCI Greene. Yarris confirms the type of abuse Nimley alleged, recounting an incident in May 1998 when Yarris saw Graner and four other guards pull an inmate who purposefully flooded the toilet out of his cell and dragged him away. Yarris says Graner was holding a can of pepper spray and said "We're going to go get some." Yarris says the inmate was severely bruised the next time he was seen.
Yarris also said Graner "bragged about taunting anti-death-penalty protesters who would gather outside the prison, used racial epithets and once told a Muslim inmate he had rubbed pork all over his tray of food." In another interview, he said Graner was "responsible for moving prisoners within the facility and was 'violent, abusive, arrogant and mean-spirited.' "
Graner was fired from his job in July 2000 for walking off the job and not working a mandatory overtime shift on June 16. After filing a grievance, an arbitrator ruled after a July 2002 hearing that the firing was inappropriate, reducing it to a three-day suspension and ordering Graner reinstated with back pay. According to records, at 4:30 a.m. that morning, a supervisor informed Graner that another employee was ill and he would have to work the 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. shift in addition to his normal shift, 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. At that time, Graner did not say he could not accept the additional work, but later he told supervisors the shift would conflict with the weekly custody exchange of his children.
At the time his employment was terminated, Graner had been disciplined six times: two written reprimands (one in December 1997 for being unreliable), a one-day suspension (in October 1998 for tardiness), two five-day suspensions (March 1999 and February 2000 for tardiness and absenteeism), and his dismissal. Despite the more serious claims against Graner listed above, all disciplinary actions taken against Graner were for tardiness, absenteeism, and improperly scheduling leave, except the dismissal itself.
Domestic Abuse and Persian Gulf War edit
On June 15, 1990, Graner married Staci M. Dean, a 19-year-old from Ohiopyle. The marriage took place in Farmington after she become pregnant with the first of their two children, Brittni. On the marriage license application, Graner listed his occupation as "construction worker."
Later, Graner was deployed during the Persian Gulf War, serving with the 2nd MP Co, originally of 4th FSSG, 4th Marine Division, a Marine Reserve unit based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. On January 16, 1991, he arrived in Saudi Arabia, taking part in Operation Desert Storm during. From here, he traveled to the largest prisoner-of-war camp near the Saudi-Kuwaiti border. Graner worked at the camp for "about six weeks." The Los Angeles Times interviewed Ross Guidotti, whom Graner served with:
"About eight football fields long and ringed by thick razor wire, it handled perhaps 20,000 captured Iraqis during the war. Among those were 4,000 who threatened to riot on the night Guidotti describes as 'scary as hell' for him, Graner and about 110 other Marines standing guard.
"The bedraggled Iraqis panicked when a fierce rain and wind storm blew apart a makeshift mess hall where they were being fed. "They were pushing their own soldiers into the wire. We were on the other side. They were screaming in Arabic, 'Kill us! We're dogs! We're going to die anyway!' Guidotti recalls. 'I got a shotgun loaded up with ammo and I'm thinking, 'I'm dead.'"
"It was one of those moments when someone could have set off a massacre. But no one did get killed, he recalled, because they were disciplined and their commanders were there to order a few warning shotgun blasts over the heads of the Iraqis. Then they found more rations to feed the enemy, a simple solution to the crisis that made it into the official Marine history of Desert Storm. (...)
"In Desert Storm, the first President Bush ordered a cease-fire by the end of February 1991, and "Chuck, me and a whole bunch of guys," Guidotti recalls, 'we came home May 15.'
"He'll never forget that moment.
"Before Chuck Graner ever became known as this sadistic criminal, I'm going to tell you what I saw - the last image of Chuck Graner burned into my mind: I guess he's 22, his eyes red with tears, crying, holding his little girl with his wife beside him.
"That's the last memory I got of Chuck Graner...the happiest moment, I would imagine, of his life."
On January 21, 1991, Graner's daughter Brittni Stacia was born. On February 9, 1993, Dean Charles Graner, the couple's second child, was born. On May 29, 1997, Staci Graner filed for divorce and the couple separated. On June 16, 1997, Common Pleas Judge Ralph Warman issues a first order of protection against Graner to Staci Dean. This resulted from Graner's comment to Dean that "she could keep his guns, because he did not need them for what he was going to do to the plaintiff." Warman also ordered Graner not to have any contact with his ex-wife for six months except for exchanging their children for child custody exchanges, which he ordered to take place at Uniontown's police station. In February 1998, Staci Dean filed another complaint in court, writing that Graner had been sneaking around her home at night:
"Charles picked me up and threw me against the wall...I just don't think this is normal behavior, and he does frighten me."
Dean also said that Graner "set up a video camera in my house without my knowledge and showed me the tapes." A second order of protection against Graner was issued to Dean.
In March 2001, Police were called to Staci Dean's home after her ex-husband allegedly came into the rooms where she was sleeping. According to Fayette County court papers, Graner entered the room where Staci Dean was sleeping and attacked her, banging her head against a wall. Later that year, Staci Dean filed a five-page, handwritten affidavit stating that Graner had "yanked me out of bed by my hair, dragging me and all the covers into the hall and tried to throw me down the steps," which Graner had admitted to. The affidavit also says that Graner "set up a video camera in my house without my knowledge and showed me the tapes." Criminal charges were not filed, and a third order of protection against Graner was issued to Dean.
Graner was convicted of conspiracy to maltreat detainees, failing to protect detainees from abuse, cruelty, and maltreatment, as well as charges of assault, indecency, and dereliction of duty. He was found guilty of all charges on January 14, 2005, and sentenced to 10 years in prison, demotion to private, dishonorable discharge and forfeiture of pay and allowances. Charges of adultery and obstruction of justice were dropped before trial. On August 6, 2011, Graner was released from the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas after serving six-and-a-half years of his ten-year sentence.
Specialist Jeremy Sivits, a soldier who pleaded guilty to charges related to the Abu Ghraib investigation, alleged that Graner once struck a prisoner in the head with such force that he lost consciousness.