More Abu Ghraib abuse images broadcast

The US government braced itself for another chapter of the Abu Ghraib scandal after dozens of previously undisclosed images showing US soldiers alongside beaten and sexually humiliated Iraqis were broadcast in Australia on Feb. 15. The photographs and videos, which are currently the subject of a legal tug-of-war in the US, were shown on Feb. 15 by Dateline, a current affairs show on the Australian television network SBS. The images showed Iraqi prisoners with severe burns and head injuries, a blood-spattered toilet and one apparently dead man. Naked prisoners were forced to assume humiliating poses or masturbate and were held next to barking dogs. One photograph showed several naked Iraqis in hoods; one has the words "I'm a rapist" written on his thigh. Some of the pictures appear to show Army Spec. Charles Graner, the first US soldier convicted for the abuse. Dateline claims that the photographs are some of the hundreds of images and videos collected by Sgt. Joseph Darby, the US military policeman who became the whistleblower in the scandal in January 2004. A handful of the so-called Darby photographs were leaked in 2004 and formed the basis of the most serious US public relations disaster of the Iraq War. But hundreds more were kept secret by the US Department of Defense. Last month, President Bush said that the original images "gave the enemy an incredible propaganda tool." He acknowledged: "There's no question... we were disgraced. I know it caused a lot of people who want to like us to question whether they should." In the ensuing investigations of the abuse, 87 photographs and four videos of incidents at Abu Ghraib, a prison made notorious for torture by Saddam Hussein, were shown to US senators but were not made public. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld described the pictures at the time as "blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhuman" and gave warning that their publication would damage US interests in the world. But last September, the American Civil Liberties Union, persuaded a New York judge to release the images. Judge Alvin Hellerstein ordered the identity of the Iraqi prisoners to be masked and rejected the Pentagon's argument that the release of the images would break the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit the humiliation of prisoners of war. The Pentagon appealed, blocking the release. The latest Abu Ghraib pictures and videos were quickly rebroadcast around the Arab world, sparking yet more anger. "This is truly American ugliness that no other country in the world can compete with," Saleh al-Humaidi, a Yemeni journalist, told Reuters. But a senior Iraqi Foreign Ministry adviser questioned the wisdom of airing footage of events for which US soldiers had already been punished, and a Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, said the images could only inflame the situation and incite further unnecessary violence against American military personnel. "The abuses of Abu Graib have been fully investigated," he added. "When there have been abuses, this department has acted on them promptly, investigated them thoroughly and where appropriate prosecuted individuals." A spokeswoman for Dateline declined to say how the program obtained the images but said SBS was "confident in the credibility of the source of these new photographs and videos." The program's executive producer, Mike Carey, told Agence France-Presse that the pictures were broadcast "because it is an important matter of public interest that the full story of abuse at Abu Ghraib be told." Recently, Iraqi cities have been beset by protests against the depiction of the Prophet Mohammed in cartoons published in European newspapers. Relations between Iraqis and British soldiers serving in the south of the country have also been severely strained by the emergence of a video last weekend which appeared to show British troops beating Iraqi teenagers who took part in a riot. Three British soldiers are being held in a Ministry of Defense investigation into the abuse.