Army investigators have recommended bringing abuse-related charges against 26 soldiers stemming from a probe into the deaths of two detainees in Afghanistan in December 2002, Pentagon officials said yesterday. The cases, involving the two deaths and other incidents at the big U.S. base in Bagram, Afghanistan, represent an attempt to assign criminal responsibility for abuse of detainees that occurred well before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and the subsequent scandal over the maltreatment of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad. [more
]