Nearly 200 Images Released by US Military Depict Bush-Era Detainee Abuse
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - Bruises, reddened marks and bandaged body parts featured in nearly 200 images of US detainee abuse that the Pentagon was forced to release on Friday, the result of a court battle that has lasted more than a decade.
While the American Civil Liberties Union – which has fought for the publication of the photos of Bush-era torture in Iraq and Afghanistan since October 2003 – hailed the belated disclosure, it pledged to keep fighting for approximately 1,800 more images the Pentagon continues to withhold, which it believes documents far more graphic detainee torture.
The photos are part of a cache relevant to investigations of detainee abuse at two dozen US military sites around Iraq and Afghanistan, and perhaps Guantánamo Bay. Many showed detainees in states of undress having their bodies inspected, with rulers and coins held up for comparison and placement of injuries.
A measurement strip lies on the hand of a detainee in an undated photo from Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, among 198 images released in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense in Washington, DC February 5, 2016.
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In November, Ashton Carter, the US defense secretary, cleared the way to release 198 of the images after a federal judge rejected longstanding government attempts to suppress the entire cache.
In allowing the release of the photos, Carter has reversed the decisions of two of his Pentagon predecessors and a bevy of senior military officers over the years. Nevertheless, the ACLU called the release insufficient, selective and indicative of a cover-up of detainee abuse stretching across the Bush and Obama administrations.
“It’s most likely the case that these are the most innocuous of the photos, and if that’s true, it’s a shadow of meaningful transparency,” said Alex Abdo, an ACLU attorney who has worked on the photo litigation since 2005.
The photos appeared decontextualized, without indication of what specific abuses investigators inspected, where detainees were held, or under what circumstances.
A detainee shows his scalp in an undated photo from Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, among 198 images released in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense in Washington, DC February 5, 2016.
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Several photos were grainy, showing sections of the body where detainees alleged US troops harmed them, without showing a person in full. Several images displayed detainees’ legs, backs, feet and occasionally their heads, though the head photographs did not show visible contusions.
None of the photographs showed a detained man’s unobscured face.
A Pentagon statement accompanying the photos said that the investigations they supported had resulted in 14 substantiated allegations, from which “65 service members received some form of disciplinary action”, ranging from letters of reprimand to life imprisonment.
Since the ACLU first sought the photos in the wake of the international outcry over US torture at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, a wall of US government resistance had long held firm. Famously, in May 2009, Obama reversed his position on the photograph’s release in May 2009, and ordered the photos to remain hidden, contending they would “further inflame anti-American opinion” if released, The Guardian reported.
An unidentified photo shows a detainee in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, one of among 198 images released in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the US Department of Defense in Washington, DC February 5, 2016.
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A Pentagon statement said that senior military commanders were consulted before the release, and pledged the military to ensuring “the safe, lawful, and humane treatment of individuals in US custody in the context of armed conflicts, consistent with the treaty obligations of the United States, including the Geneva Conventions”.
