Hersh: Children sodomized at Abu Ghraib, on tape. After Donald Rumsfeld testified on the Hill about Abu Ghraib in May, there was talk of more photos and video in the Pentagon’s custody more horrific than anything made public so far.
“If these are released to the public, obviously it’s going to make matters worse,” Rumsfeld said. Since then, the Washington Post has disclosed some new details and images of abuse at the prison. But if Seymour Hersh is right, it all gets much worse. Photo Exhibit Restores Dignity To Victims of U.S. Torture. The U.S. military used a camera as a torture device at Abu Grahib.
To add further humiliation to detainees who were already put in cages, urinated on, stripped naked then stacked in macabre human pyramids, their photos were taken during these degrading acts. “I wanted to use the camera to restore these peoples’ humanity through beautiful portraiture,” says photographer Chris Bartlett, whose exhibition, “Iraqi Detainees: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Ordeals,” opens tonight in New York. The scars of Abu Ghraib - Features. Baghdad, Iraq - Taleb al-Maleji sits on the carpet and concentrates on smoking a cigarette and not biting himself.
The sleeves of his checkered shirt end just above his thin wrists - shiny black and purple in spots where the skin has repeatedly been bitten off and healed over. The scars are not from the year he spent in Abu Ghraib prison but from compulsively biting his wrists and fingers when he thinks about it. "When I remember it now, I just want to set myself on fire," says Maleji, one of a group of men stripped, bound and placed in a human pyramid in a photo that became a symbol of post-war US human rights abuses. "I want to forget but I can't … I think of it when I sleep, when I'm awake, when I'm at work - the same scenes keep playing inside my head. " In 2003, Maleji was a labourer having trouble with his marriage. Over the next year and four months, Maleji would be charged with no crime, imprisoned with thieves and murderers and finally released with no charges laid against him.
Seeking Corporate Accountability for Crimes at Abu Ghraib. Flowers at the entrance to a cell block at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, where inmates were tortured while under American control, on Saturday, February 21, 2009.
(Photo: Jehad Nga / The New York Times) We need your help to sustain grassroots, groundbreaking journalism. Make a tax-deductible contribution to Truthout now by clicking here. Nine years ago today, photos from the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were released to the public. The images are indelible: Groups of prisoners, naked except for hoods covering their heads are piled on top of one another; soldiers grin and give thumbs-up to the camera; one holds a naked prisoner on a leash. Lesser known than the torture at Abu Ghraib is who was running it. The only accountability that survivors of torture have been able to obtain against these private corporations has come through civil litigation. Al Shimari has taken on special importance in the wake of the Supreme Court’s April 17 ruling in Kiobel v. No Accountability for Military Contractor’s Role in Abu Ghraib Torture, Federal Judge Says. District Court Dismisses Torture Lawsuit against U.S.
Contractor on International Day in Support of Victims of Torture press@ccrjustice.org June 26, Alexandria, VA – Today, on the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, a United States district court dismissed a lawsuit brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) on behalf of four Iraqi men who were tortured at Abu Ghraib. Al Shimari v. CACI International Inc. was filed against private U.S. In dismissing the torture victims’ claims, the district judge did not suggest that the plaintiffs’ allegations of torture or a conspiracy involving CACI were unfounded. Said Center for Constitutional Rights Legal Director Baher Azmy, “The district court was incorrect to read Kiobel in such a narrow and technical way, as its ruling effectively created lawless spaces where even U.S.
Plaintiffs plan to appeal the district court’s decision. Roots of Abu Ghraib and CIA techniques. POWs their jailers. The UN Bloody Hands Commission. Among the costs of the Abu Ghraib scandal is the harm it does to America's standing as a champion of human rights--and the distraction it creates, in international circles, from the misdeeds of truly heinous regimes.
"Whenever the United States raises a criticism of somebody else, this is immediately what will be thrown back in your face," says Paul Marshall, a senior fellow at Freedom House. Human Rights Hypocrisy. American Politicians Go Too Far in Condemning The Abuses of Iraqi Prisoners at Abu Ghraib. We don't know yet the full extent of the damage to America's international reputation, thanks to the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison.
But one thing we do know: The world's dictatorships are exploiting this scandal. They're using it to deflect criticism of their own records of repression and murder. Take Sudan. Ruled by a radical Islamic government notorious for acts of genocide during a 20-year civil war, this same Sudan gave America a tongue-lashing over Abu Ghraib at the most recent meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva. Yet the Khartoum government has been charged with ethnic cleansing, widespread rape, and massacres by government militias. In the United States, election-year politics is making matters worse. Who's Tortured? What prominent conservative commentators have said about prisoner abuse. On Dec. 20, the American Civil Liberties Union published nearly two dozen FBI memos showing that American abuse of prisoners and detainees in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba was more widespread and systemic than has been previously made public.
Included in the documents, which were obtained via Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, was a May 2004 memo from an "On-scene Commander—Baghdad," making repeated reference to an "Executive Order" about military interrogation that allowed for tactics "outside standard FBI practice. " U.S.: Investigate Rumsfeld, Tenet for Torture (Human Rights Watch, 24-4-2005) The United States should name a special prosecutor to investigate the culpability of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and ex-CIA Director George Tenet in cases of detainee torture and abuse, Human Rights Watch said in releasing a new report today.
The report, Getting Away with Torture? Command Responsibility for the U.S. Abuse of Detainees, is issued on the eve of the first anniversary of the publication of the Abu Ghraib photos (April 28). It presents substantial evidence warranting criminal investigations of Rumsfeld and Tenet, as well as Lt. Gen. German Law Journal - Torture in Abu Ghraib. Part II/II.