Beginning in 2004, accounts of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, including torture, rape, sodomy, and homicide of prisoners held in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq (also known as Baghdad Correctional Facility) came to public attention. These acts were committed by personnel of the 372nd Military Police Company of the United States Army together with additional US governmental agencies.
As revealed by the 2004 Taguba Report, a criminal investigation by the United States Army Criminal Investigation Command had already been underway since 2003 where many soldiers of the 320th Military Police Battalion had been charged under the Uniform Code of Military Justice with prisoner abuse. In 2004 articles describing the abuse, including pictures showing military personnel abusing prisoners, came to public attention, when a 60 Minutes II news report (April 28) and an article by Seymour M. Hersh in The New Yorker magazine (posted online on April 30 and published days later in the May 10 issue) reported the story. Janis Karpinski, the commander of Abu Ghraib, demoted for her lack of oversight regarding the abuse, estimated later that 90% of detainees in the prison were innocent.
The United States Department of Defense removed seventeen soldiers and officers from duty, and eleven soldiers were charged with dereliction of duty, maltreatment, aggravated assault and battery. Between May 2004 and March 2006, eleven soldiers were convicted in courts martial, sentenced to military prison, and dishonorably discharged from service. Two soldiers, Specialist Charles Graner, and his former fiancée, Specialist Lynndie England, were sentenced to ten years and three years in prison, respectively, in trials ending on January 14, 2005 and September 26, 2005. The commanding officer at the prison, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, was demoted to the rank of Colonel on May 5, 2005. Col. Karpinski has denied knowledge of the abuses, claiming that the interrogations were authorized by her superiors and performed by subcontractors, and that she was not even allowed entry into the interrogation rooms.
The abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib was in part the reason that on April 12, 2006, the United States Army activated the 201st Military Intelligence Battalion, the first of four joint interrogation battalions.
Treatment of prisoners
Torture
Prisoners were subjected to severe physical, psychological, and sexual abuse. The abuse included sleep deprivation, forced stress positions, forced nudity, forced sex, using dogs to scare and bite prisoners, forced sex with dogs, prisoners forced to have sex with one another and death threats.
Death of Manadel al-Jamadi
Main article: Manadel al-JamadiThe prisoner Manadel al-Jamadi died in Abu Ghraib prison after being interrogated and tortured by a CIA officer and a private contractor. The torture included physical violence and strappado hanging whereby the victim's is hung from the wrists with the hands tied behind the back. His death has been labeled a homicide by the US military , but neither of the two men that caused his death have been charged. The private contractor was granted immunity.
Other deaths in Abu Ghraib Prison
It was reported by Salon of multiple deaths of Iraqi prisoners in U.S. custody. This includes at least 28 dying at Abu Ghraib according a report issued by the ACLU. .
Raping of prisoners
Major General Antonio Taguba has stated that there is photographic evidence of rape being carried out by American military personnel at Abu Ghraib. An Iraqi teenage boy was raped by a uniformed man while photos of it were taken by a female US military police. The alleged rapist was identified by a witness as an American-Egyptian who worked as a translator, and who is now the subject of a civil court case in the US. Another photo shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner. Other photos show sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube, and a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts. Taguba has supported President Obama's decision not to release the photos, stating "These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency."
In another case, a female inmate was raped by an American military policeman. In a third reported case, witnesses said US guards repeatedly raped a 14 year old girl in 2003. . In a fourth reported case, Senior US officials admitted rape had taken place at Abu Ghraib.
Media coverage
US media initially showed little interest when elements in the US military first reported abuse. On January 16, 2004, United States Central Command informed the media that an official investigation had begun involving abuse and humiliation of Iraqi inmates by a group of US soldiers. On February 24, it was reported that 17 soldiers had been suspended. The military announced again, on March 21, 2004, that the first charges had been filed against six soldiers.
60 Minutes II broadcast and aftermath
It was not until late April 2004 that U.S. television news-magazine 60 Minutes II broadcast a story on the abuse. The story included photographs depicting the abuse of prisoners.
The news segment had been delayed by two weeks at the request of the Department of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers. In the CBS report, Dan Rather interviewed then-deputy director of Coalition operations in Iraq Brig. Gen Mark Kimmitt who said:
The first thing I’d say is we’re appalled as well. These are our fellow soldiers. These are the people we work with every day, and they represent us. They wear the same uniform as us, and they let their fellow soldiers down Our soldiers could be taken prisoner as well. And we expect our soldiers to be treated well by the adversary, by the enemy. And if we can't hold ourselves up as an example of how to treat people with dignity and respect We can't ask that other nations to that to our soldiers as well. So what would I tell the people of Iraq? This is wrong. This is reprehensible. But this is not representative of the 150,000 soldiers that are over here I'd say the same thing to the American people ... Don't judge your army based on the actions of a few.— Gen Mark Kimmitt,At the same time, Kimmitt said: "I'd like to sit here and say that these are the only prisoner abuse cases that we're aware of, but we know that there have been some other ones since we've been here in Iraq."
Former Marine Lt. Col. Bill Cowan was also interviewed, stating: "We went into Iraq to stop things like this from happening, and indeed, here they are happening under our tutelage."
Rather interviewed Army Reserve Staff Sgt. Chip Frederick, a participant in the abuse, whose civilian job was as a corrections officer at a Virginia prison. Frederick stated, "We had no support, no training whatsoever. And I kept asking my chain of command for certain things ... like rules and regulations," says Frederick. "And it just wasn't happening." Frederick's video diary, sent home from Iraq, provided some of the images used in the story.
In the diary are listed detailed, dated entries that chronicle abuse and names, for example,
They stressed him out so bad that the man died. The next day the medics came in and put his body on a stretcher, placed a fake I.V. in his arm and took him away. This OGA (other governmental agency) was never processed and therefore never had a number.— Ivan Frederickand, "MI (Military Intelligence) has been present and witnessed such activity. MI has encouraged and told us great job that they were now getting positive results and information." The CBS report did not explain who had taken the photographs showed to viewers, nor was it explained how CBS had come by them. They were not released to CBS by the specialists interviewed, nor was any member of the US armed forces charged with supplying these photographs to the media.
Hersh New Yorker article
A May 2004 article by Seymour M. Hersh in The New Yorker magazine explored the abuses in detail, and used as its source a copy of the Taguba report.
The New Yorker , under the direction of editor David Remnick, posted a report on its website by Hersh, along with a number of graphic and disturbing images of the torture taken by U.S. military prison guards with digital cameras. The article, entitled "Torture at Abu Ghraib", was followed in the next two weeks by two more articles on the same subject, "Chain of Command” and "The Gray Zone,” also by Mr. Hersh.
It was only after CBS learned that The New Yorker planned to publish the pictures in its next issue that they went ahead with their report on April 28."
Seymour Hersh's undercover sources claimed that an interrogation program called "Copper Green"
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