February 17, 2006 - The Guardian (UK) Abu Ghraib Leaked Report Reveals Full Extent of Abuse By Suzanne Goldenberg

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• 1,325 images of suspected detainee abuse
• 93 video files of suspected detainee abuse
• 660 images of adult pornography
• 546 images of suspected dead Iraqi detainees
• 29 images of soldiers in simulated sexual acts

Nearly two years after the first pictures of naked and humiliated Iraqi detainees emerged from Abu Ghraib prison, the full extent of the abuse became known for the first time yesterday with a leaked report from the US army's internal investigation into the scandal.

The catalogue of abuse, which was obtained by the online American magazine Salon, could not have arrived at a worse time for the Bush administration, coinciding with yesterday's United Nations report on abuse of detainees at Guantanamo, the release of a video showing British troops beating up Iraqi youths, and lingering anger in the Muslim world over cartoons of the prophet Muhammad.

Bush administration officials had already been fending off a new wave of anger about the torture of detainees -- following the airing of graphic images from Abu Ghraib on Australian television -- when Salon posted a story on its website yesterday saying it had obtained what appears to be the fullest photographic record to date of the abuse.

It said the material, gathered by the army's criminal investigation division, included 1,325 photographs and 93 video clips of suspected abuse of detainees, 546 photographs of suspected dead Iraqi detainees, as well as 660 images of adult pornography, and 29 pictures of US troops engaged in simulated sex acts. Based on date stamps, all were recorded between October 18 and December 30 2003, the same timeframe as the original scandal.

The website published 18 pictures from the prison. Aside from the ritualised images of humiliation -- naked Iraqi men kneeling or lying on the ground alone or in a heap or wearing women's underwear on their heads -- they also reveal the apparent normality of those bizarre scenes within Abu Ghraib. One of the pictures shows an army sergeant standing calmly to fill out paperwork on a wall. Behind him is a hooded, naked detainee. Another photograph shows Staff Sergeant Ivan Chip Frederick -- who was tried for his role in the abuse scandal -- trimming his fingernails beside an Iraqi who is standing on a box wearing a hood and electrical wires.

There are also images of physical violence: a blood-streaked cell, and a picture of the battered face of a corpse packed in ice. "The DVD also includes photographs of guards threatening Iraqi prisoners with dogs, homemade videotapes depicting hooded prisoners being forced to masturbate, and a video showing a mentally disturbed prisoner smashing his head against a door. Oddly, the material also includes numerous photographs of slaughtered animals and mundane images of soldiers travelling around Iraq," Salon said.

The magazine said it thought the material included all of the pictures that originally surfaced when the abuse became known in April 2004, as well as the pictures aired on Australian television. Human rights organisations have been fighting for months for the army to release a full record of the abuse at Abu Ghraib. Salon said it received the material from a member of the military who had spent time at the jail and was familiar with the investigation.

The first official response from Washington as well as Baghdad was concerned as much with the impact these new pictures of abuse could have in the Middle East at a time when anger against the west is high. A Pentagon spokesman said the release of additional images of abuse "could only further inflame and possibly incite unnecessary violence in the world".

Iraq's prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, while condemning the abuse at Abu Ghraib, noted that US soldiers had already been punished for it.

Mr Jaafari's government was also on the defensive about torture yesterday after the first direct evidence emerged that death squads had operated from within the interior ministry.

The US general in charge of training the Iraqi police, Major General Joseph Peterson, told the Chicago Tribune that the death squads that had been arresting and killing Sunnis had been operating from within the police force although they wore commando uniforms. "We have found one of the death squads," Gen Peterson told the paper. "They are a part of the police force of Iraq."

In another development, ABC television on Wednesday night aired audio tapes of Saddam Hussein's cabinet meetings during the mid-1990s, including a segment in which he says he warned Washington of a terror attack. "Terrorism is coming. I told the Americans," Saddam is heard saying, adding that he "told the British as well". However, he adds: "This story is coming, but not from Iraq."

February 17, 2006 - Agence France-Presse (France)

New Abu Ghraib Images Highlight Worst of Iraq Occupation

Iraqis have expressed outrage after new exposure of prisoner abuse at Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib prison, warning the images could further increase already intense anti-Western tensions.

The government, faced with the need to denounce such abuse but also avoid opposition calls for the immediate withdrawal of foreign forces, renewed its condemnation of the 2003 scandal.

"The Iraqi government strongly condemns the torture of Iraqi prisoners revealed in the images broadcast and insist that it is not repeated," the government said in a statement.

An official in Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari's office said "this serious affair totally contradicts human rights and should not be repeated."

Australian television earlier this week broadcast a new batch of photos linked to the abuse of Iraqi detainees at the US-run Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad.

The pictures showed one man covered in what appeared to be excrement, another with a gash in his throat, and an alleged interrogation room covered in blood. Video footage showed a row of naked men apparently masturbating.

For many Iraqis the images, which follow the publication in 2004 of a first series of such pictures, drove home the wrongs of the occupation of their country.

"I felt disgusted when I saw those pictures and I felt at the same time how weak our government is that it can't help its own people," said Sadun Mohammed, sitting in his shop reading an article in the newspaper.

While Iraq's press were filled with accounts of a new crop of photos, newspapers elected not to republish the photographs, which received extensive exposure on satellite television channels.

"I think if we put pictures in the newspaper like this it will just increase the violence," said Naji Hassan, news editor for the independent daily Sabah Al-Jadid. Other editors said the photos were available too late to publish.

"We don't want to publish these pictures because they are humiliating, and if we published this in a newspaper it would be seen by his family, neighbors and neighborhood," added Hassan.

In Washington, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the US military had acted to make sure such violence would never happen again.

"This administration acted quickly, and our military acted quickly, to hold people to account and bring them to justice, and to also take steps to prevent something like that from happening again," McClellan said.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also said that those involved had been brought to justice, and that such behaviour was not tolerated.

"The Department of Defense from the beginning of this conflict has a policy that prohibits torture. It is not permitted and we do not today. The people are trained to avoid it," he told a congressional hearing in Washington.

The images, apparently showing dead bodies and bloodied and naked prisoners, were taken around the same time as the original Abu Ghraib abuse pictures leaked two years ago causing caused outrage around the world.

Mike Carey, the producer of the Australian program Dateline, which aired the photographs and videos doubted they could worsen the situation in Iraq.

"I don't think anything that we do here in Australia is going to make their risk any greater or smaller," he said.

Fadel al-Sharaa, a representative of firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr's political movement, disagreed and expected the photographs to inflame popular sentiment.

"It seems that the occupier still doesn't understand the nature of the Iraqi people," he said. "The Iraqi people cannot be insulted, and this will create massive hostility against the occupier."

Outside the ministry of justice in central Baghdad, civil servant Jenan Abed Mohammed still seemed angry over the affair.

"This is a massive insult for all Iraqis and Muslims," she said. "The occupier doesn't understand the true meaning of freedom, which is what they claim they came to Iraq for."

For traffic policeman Raad Saadi at a busy intersection in Baghdad, the images as well as the video broadcast over the weekend of British forces beating up Iraqis, were all indications of the arrogance of the foreign forces.

"If a US or British soldier drives down this street now, he can stop even the convoy of a minister and the minister himself can't say a thing," he said. "They don't respect the system or order and they don't respect the citizen in the street," he said.

February 16, 2006 - Reuters (US)

Iraqi President Condemns US after New Abuse Footage

By Michael Georgy

Baghdad - New images of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison prompted Iraq's president to condemn his close ally the United States on Thursday, demanding harsh punishment for "savage crimes" as Iraqis seethed over more humiliation.

In unusually strong language, Jalal Talabani was critical of Washington as the new images were digested by Iraqis and other Arabs already enraged by insulting cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad which were published in European newspapers.

"We have condemned these savage crimes. We reject that a civilized country allow its soldiers to commit these ugly and terrible crimes," Talabani told reporters.

"We demand very harsh punishments against the perpetrators."

In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman played down the reaction over the images, saying they were not new and that the perpetrators had already been brought to justice.

"There aren't new allegations, they're old allegations. These aren't new photos, they're old photos. These are photos that were part of the evidence in the prosecutions that took place," Whitman said.

"They were the impetus for us to take a look at our detention operations in a very broad and deep fashion. And these abuses that have occurred have been thoroughly investigated."

The images of humiliated prisoners infuriated Iraqis and some predicted they would play into the hands of Saddam Hussein, whose chaotic trial has embarrassed the US-backed government.

Australia's Special Broadcasting Service's "Dateline" program said the images were recorded at the same time as the now-infamous pictures of US soldiers abusing Abu Ghraib detainees which sparked international outrage in 2004.

Some of the pictures suggest further abuse such as killing, torture and sexual humiliation, "Dateline" said.

Iraq's Human Rights Minister Zuhair al-Chalabi called on US-led troops to release Iraqi detainees on Thursday after the new footage emerged of abuse at Abu Ghraib, which along with other detention centers holds 14,000 prisoners.

"We are very worried about the Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib. The multinational forces and the British forces should hand them over to the (Iraqi) government," Chalabi told Reuters in an interview.

"The Iraqi government should move immediately to have the prisons and the prisoners delivered to the ministry of justice."

Further Loss of US Credibility

Few Iraqis believe their government has the power to force the United States to free prisoners but the tough comments are an indication of the erosion of US credibility in the country.

Iraqi passions had already been running high since a British newspaper released a video earlier this week that appears to show British soldiers beating Iraqi teenagers in 2004.

"These pictures are an insult to us and our government. Why are the Americans and the British still controlling our prisons?" asked Mohammad Jassim, 17, a Shi'ite student.

"Don't we have our own army now? This will only give Saddam the terrorist more sympathizers."

In Geneva, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said the latest images of abuse at Abu Ghraib showed clear violations of international humanitarian law.

"We are shocked and dismayed at the mistreatment and abuse displayed in these images," spokeswoman Dorothea Krimitsas said.

The images, which included an Iraqi prisoner banging his head against a metal door in desperation, came as a shock in the Arab world, even in staunchly pro-American Kuwait, where US-led troops crushed Saddam's troops in 1991.

"This is awful because I always look up to the British and Americans as the best in the world," said Kuwaiti firefighter Khalil al-Amir. "They are supposed to be more civilized. But when I see something like this it makes me think twice."

Some Iraqis said more comparisons would now be drawn favoring life under Saddam to the new US-backed Iraq.

"Now some people will claim that life was better under Saddam. Both performed crimes against humanity but at least we had security back then," said Abu Anmar, 35, a Sunni petrol station owner, referring to the daily carnage in Iraq.

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