The American general who was in charge of guards at Abu Ghraib has blamed the culture of abuse at the Iraqi prison on her superior officer who used to run the Guantanamo Bay detention centre.

Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, who was suspended last month, said that she was being made a scapegoat for the scandal and suggested that the roots of degrading treatment by guards lay in a directive from Major General Geoffrey Miller, who told her to treat inmates "like dogs".

She told the BBC that US Military Intelligence took over part of the Abu Ghraib jail to "Gitmoize" their interrogations, ie, make them more like what was happening in the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

She said that General Miller, who currently commands the US-run prison system in Iraq, visited her in Baghdad and said: 'At Guantanamo Bay we learned that the prisoners have to earn every single thing that they have.'

She added: "He said they are like dogs and if you allow them to believe at any point that they are more than a dog then you've lost control of them.

"The interrogation operation was directed, it was under a separate command and there was no reason for me to go out to look at Abu Ghraib at cell block 1a or 1b or visit the interrogation facilities."

One US soldier has been sentenced and six others are awaiting courts martial over the abuse, which shocked the world and forced President Bush into a humiliating apology.

General Karpinski hinted that the treatment of inmates at Abu Ghraib was sanctioned higher up the US command and said that General Ricardo Sanchez, the current head of ground forces in Iraq, should be asked what he knew about the affair.

General Sanchez will soon be replaced as US commander, although the Pentagon has insisted that this has nothing to do with the scandal.

Leaked internal military documents show that an interrogation unit reported mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib in November 2003, two months before military officials have said they learned of prisoner abuses, according the media reports today.

The New York Times, citing interviews with military personnel who worked in the prison, said that the abuse allegations reported to senior officers included the beatings of five blindfolded Iraqi generals.

"We were reporting it long before this mess came out," the newspaper quoted one of several unidentified military intelligence soldiers interviewed in Germany and the United States as saying.

At least 20 accounts of mistreatment were included in the documents, the newspaper cited military personnel as saying.

Some detainees described abuse at other detention facilities before they were transferred to Abu Ghraib, but at least seven incidents said to be cited in the documents took place at the prison, the newspaper reported.

The abuse allegations were cited by members of the prison's Detainee Assessment Branch, an interrogation unit, in routine weekly reports to military judge advocates and others, the New York Times said.

The unit's reports were to be sent for final approval to a three-member board that included General Karpinski.

Military officials in Baghdad acknowledged on Sunday that lawyers on a magistrate board reviewed the reports, but they could not confirm whether General Karpinski had seen them, or whether any action had been taken to investigate the incidents, the Times said.

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