Washington ? An internal Army report warned last November that Iraqis were being detained too long and without appropriate review in an immense U.S.-run prison system that failed to keep track of them, did not provide proper sanitation and medical care, was understaffed and mixed juveniles and adults inappropriately.

The confidential survey by Maj. Gen. Donald Ryder highlighted numerous prison shortcomings that stoked friction between detainees and their U.S. guards last year, which led in turn to riots and other protests that prison guards put down with abuses documented in photographs and a subsequent damning Army report.

Ryder, a criminal investigator for the Army who was appointed provost marshal general last October, was asked as one of his first assignments to survey the prison system. It was then being deluged by thousands of new detainees, many arrested in U.S. military sweeps aimed at finding or learning about Iraqis who were targeting American forces.

Although Ryder concluded in a Nov. 5 report that international norms for military prisoners were being met “with room for improvement,” he also found in particular that the Army was not respecting its own rules for regular review and timely release of the detainees it held.

Ryder reported that some detainees had been jailed for more than six months without a mandated review of their incarceration and said that many more had been imprisoned without a mandated screening — within 72 hours — to confirm that their arrests were justified.