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Report reveals scope of prisoner abuse

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 on Thursday with a leaked report from the US army's internal investigation into the scandal.

The catalogue of abuse, which was obtained by the online US magazine Salon, could not have arrived at a worse time for the Bush administration, coinciding with yesterday's UN 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 Mohammed.

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 Web site on Thursday 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 Oct. 18 and Dec. 30 2003, the same timeframe as the original scandal.

The Web site published 18 pictures from the prison. Aside from the ritualised images of humiliation they also reveal the apparent normality of those 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.
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