New images show abuse at Abu Ghraib jail

An Australian television station broadcast yesterday what it said were previously unpublished images of abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison.

The Special Broadcasting Service’s Dateline current affairs programme said the images had been recorded at the same time as those of US soldiers abusing detainees in the Iraqi prison that caused outrage in 2004. Some suggest further abuse such as killing, torture and sexual humiliation, it said.

The photographs and video images, which were rebroadcast by Arab television stations, show prisoners, some bleeding or hooded, bound to beds and doors, sometimes with a smiling guard beside them. They include a pile of five naked detainees photographed from the rear, and a dog straining at a leash close to the face of a crouching man wearing a bright orange jumpsuit.

The pictures stirred up more anger among Arabs, already incensed by the publication of images of British soldiers apparently beating Iraqi youths and by cartoons of the prophet Muhammad.

“This is truly American ugliness that no other country in the world can compete with,” a Yemeni journalist, Saleh al-Humaidi, said. “The Americans ought to apologise for their government’s lie to the world that it is fighting for freedom and that it came to Iraq to save it from Saddam Hussein’s oppression.”

The programme’s executive producer, Mike Carey, said Dateline had obtained a file containing hundreds of pictures, including some that had been seen before. He declined to say where or how it got hold of them.

Several appear to show Charles Graner, a soldier who was jailed in January for 10 years for his role in the Abu Ghraib abuse.

Some of the video footage apparently shows one prisoner banging his head against a wall, while some photographs appear to show corpses, and others feature sexually humiliating acts too graphic to broadcast, Mr Carey said.

The programme said some prisoners at Abu Ghraib had been killed when US soldiers ran out of plastic bullets as they tried to quell a jail riot, and resorted to using live rounds.

One picture showed what looked like cigarette burns on a man’s buttocks.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has been granted access to the images under US freedom of information laws, but the US government is appealing, Dateline said. An ACLU lawyer, Amrit Singh, told Dateline the images were evidence of “systemic and widespread abuse” by American soldiers.

Michael Perry, Reuters in Sydney
The Guardian