By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent and Paul Cruickshank
Last Updated: 8:21AM BST 28 May 2009
At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female
prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male
detainee.
Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with
objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.
Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly
removed to expose her breasts.
Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former
army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.
Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact
there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their
existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.
The graphic nature of some of the images may explain the US President’s
attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons
in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be
published.
Maj Gen Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the President’s
decision, adding: “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every
indecency.
“I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one
and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of
our foreign policy, when we most need them, and British troops who are
trying to build security in Afghanistan.
“The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for
it.”
In April, Mr Obama’s administration said the photographs would be released and
it would be “pointless to appeal” against a court judgment in favour of the
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
But after lobbying from senior military figures, Mr Obama changed his mind
saying they could put the safety of troops at risk.
Earlier this month, he said: “The most direct consequence of releasing them, I
believe, would be to inflame anti-American public opinion and to put our
troops in greater danger.”
It was thought the images were similar to those leaked five years ago, which
showed naked and bloody prisoners being intimidated by dogs, dragged around
on a leash, piled into a human pyramid and hooded and attached to wires.
Mr Obama seemed to reinforce that view by adding: “I want to emphasise that
these photos that were requested in this case are not particularly
sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember
from Abu Ghraib.”
The latest photographs relate to 400 cases of alleged abuse between 2001 and
2005 in Abu Ghraib and six other prisons. Mr Obama said the individuals
involved had been “identified, and appropriate actions” taken.
Maj Gen Taguba’s internal inquiry into the abuse at Abu Ghraib, included sworn
statements by 13 detainees, which, he said in the report, he found “credible
based on the clarity of their statements and supporting evidence provided by
other witnesses.”
Among the graphic statements, which were later released under US freedom of
information laws, is that of Kasim Mehaddi Hilas in which he says: “I saw
[name of a translator] ******* a kid, his age would be about 15 to 18 years.
The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets.
Then when I heard screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t
covered and I saw [name] who was wearing the military uniform, putting his
**** in the little kid’s ***…. and the female soldier was taking pictures.”
The translator was an American Egyptian who is now the subject of a civil
court case in the US.
Three detainees, including the alleged victim, refer to the use of a
phosphorescent tube in the sexual abuse and another to the use of wire,
while the victim also refers to part of a policeman’s “stick” all of which
were apparently photographed.
There are those who argue that U.S. officials who authorized
waterboarding and who performed waterboarding should not be held
criminally accountable, notwithstanding the fact that the U.S.
government prosecuted Japanese military personnel who waterboarded U.S.
POWs during World War II. Their reasoning goes as follows: Since the
president’s attorneys redefined torture to mean only those actions that
threaten death or serious injury to bodily organs, waterboarding did
not meet that redefinition.
What
about rape? It would seem that rape, like waterboarding, would not meet
the Bush administration’s redefinition of torture. Rape doesn’t
threaten death or serious injury to bodily organs. Should U.S.
officials who authorized enhanced interrogation techniques be let off
the hook for rapes committed by U.S. officials as part of enhanced
interrogations of detainees?
That of course begs the question: Were people raped as part of the U.S. government’s enhanced interrogation techniques?
Well,
think back to the Abu Ghrab photos and videos, which depicted sordid
sexual acts being committed by U.S. personnel on Iraqi prisoners. You
may have forgotten that there was a particular set of photos and videos
that were never released to the public because they depicted acts that
were apparently much worse than anything that was shown in the photos
that were released. Therefore, U.S. officials decided to keep those
particular photos and videos under lock and key.
What do those
photos and videos reflect? We don’t really know, but according to an
article dated July 15, 2004, on Salon.com, Seymour Hersh is quoted as
saying in a speech to the ACLU:
Debating about it, ummm ...
Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay?
Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they
were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at
Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying “Please come
and kill me, because of what's happened” and basically what happened is
that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases
that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras
rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys
shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's
going to come out.
The Salon article concludes with the following paragraph:
(Update: A reader brought to our attention that the rape of boys at Abu
Ghraib has been mentioned in some news accounts of the prisoner abuse
evidence. The Telegraph and other news organizations described “a
videotape, apparently made by US personnel, is said to show Iraqi
guards raping young boys.” The Guardian reported “formal statements by
inmates published yesterday describe horrific treatment at the hands of
guards, including the rape of a teenage Iraqi boy by an army
translator.”)
It should be noted that that batch of photos and
videos is a different batch from the ones that the Obama administration
is now doing its best to keep secret.
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