Washington: Lt Gen Ricardo S Sanchez, the top US military commander in Iraq, had approved the use of 32 high-pressure interrogation tactics, including the use of military dogs, on inmates at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, a report said today (Jun 12, 2004).

Sanchez approved letting senior officials at Abu Ghraib to use military dogs, temperature extremes, reversed sleep patterns and food deprivation among others, according to newly revealed documents.

He borrowed heavily from a list of high-pressure interrogation tactics used at the US detention centre in Guantanamo Bay (Cuba), 'The Washington Post' said.

The tactics were approved by Sanchez in September 2003 and could be imposed without seeking permission from anyone outside the prison. That gave officers at the Abu Ghraib a wide latitude in handling the detainees, the paper said.

However, officials at the Florida headquarters of the US Central Command, which has overall responsibility for Iraq, objected to some of the 32 tactics approved by Sanchez.

As a result, Sanchez decided on October 12 to remove "several items" on the list and to require that officials obtain his approval for the remaining high-pressure methods.

Among the tactics apparently dropped were those that would take away prisoners' religious items, control their exposure to light, inflict "pride and ego down" which means attacking detainees' sense of pride or worth and allow interrogators to pretend falsely to be from a country that deals severely with detainees.