Abu Ghraib prison
Abu Ghraib (IPA: /ʔabuː ɣrajb/; Arabic: أبو غريب) is a prison located in the city of Abu Ghraib, Iraq, 32 km west of Baghdad. The prison complex covers 280 acres (115 ha) with a total of 24 guard towers. There are five walled compounds within the facility. Cells in the facility are approximately four metres by four metres and hold an average 40 prisoners each.
During the Ba'athist regime, it was known as Abu Ghraib Prison (or Saddam's Torture Central) and had a reputation as a place of torture. Currently the U.S.-led coalition occupying Iraq utilizes the site as the Baghdad Correctional Facility, though it remains better known under its original official name. In late April 2004, U.S. television news-magazine 60 Minutes II broke a story involving abuse and humiliation of Iraqi inmates by a small group of U.S. soldiers. The story included photographs depicting the abuse of prisoners.
Note: this article includes several of these photographs of prisoner abuse, including a picture of a dead body.
Under Saddam Hussein
Under the regime of Saddam Hussein the facility was under the control of the Directorate of General Security (Amn al-Amm) and was the site of the torture and execution of thousands of political prisoners—up to 4000 prisoners are thought to have been executed there in 1984 alone.
The political section of Abu Ghraib was divided into "open" and "closed" wings. The closed wing housed only Shi'ites. They were not allowed visitors or any outside contact.
Coalition prisoners were held and tortured in Abu Ghraib during the Gulf War, including the ill-fated British SAS patrol Bravo Two Zero.
In 2001 the prison is thought to have held as many as 15,000 inmates. Hundreds of Shi'a Kurds and other Iraqi citizens of Iranian ethnicity had reportedly been held there incommunicado and without charges since the beginning of the Iran-Iraq War. Prisoners were routinely executed. Guards fed shredded plastic to prisoners. There are allegations that some of these detainees were subjected to experiments as part of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons program.
An expansion of the prison was underway prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
When Hussein's regime fell, the compound was looted by former prisoners.
Under the US-led coalition
Since the fall of the Ba'athist regime the prison has been used as a detention facility by the U.S.-led coalition occupying Iraq, holding more than 5,000 people, some alleged rebels, some alleged criminals and others free of any such allegations.
General Taguba's report
In January 2004, a U.S. Army MP discovered digital images of apparent detainee abuse on a CD-ROM. He reported the pictures to his superiors, prompting coalition commander Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez to order United States Army Major General Antonio Taguba, to investigate. Two further investigations were also launched.
Taguba's 53-page report, classified "Secret" and dated April 4, 2004, concluded that U.S. soldiers had committed "egregious acts and grave breaches of international law" at Abu Gharaib. Taguba found that between October and December 2003 there were numerous instances of "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" of prisoners. In violation of Army regulations, intelligence officers asked military police to "loosen up" inmates before questioning.
Taguba cited numerous organizational and leadership failures at Abu Ghraib. Reservists tasked with guarding the prison population were inadequately trained, and Taguba faulted senior commanders for failing to address these deficiencies. Dozens of inmate escapes were unrecorded.
Taguba's report cited the following examples of inmate abuse:
- Punching, slapping, and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet;
- Videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees;
- Forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing;
- Forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time.
- Forcing naked male detainees to wear women's underwear;
- Forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped;
- Arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them;
- Positioning a naked detainee on a MRE Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture;
- Writing 'I am a Rapest' (sic) on the leg of a detainee alleged to have forcibly raped a 15-year old fellow detainee, and then photographing him naked;
- Placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee's neck and having a female Soldier pose for a picture;
- A male MP guard having sex with a female detainee;
- Using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate and frighten detainees, and in at least one case biting and severely injuring a detainee;
- Taking photographs of dead Iraqi detainees.
- ...
- Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees;
- Threatening detainees with a charged 9mm pistol;
- Pouring cold water on naked detainees;
- Beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair;
- Threatening male detainees with rape;
- Allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell;
- Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick.
- Using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.
By the time Taguba's report was completed, 17 soldiers and officers, including Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, were removed from duty. Six soldiers face courts-martial and possible prison time as a result of their roles in the events. Their charges included dereliction of duty, maltreatment, aggravated assault and battery.
Other internal investigations
One of the other internal investigations launched is examining whether these abuses were encouraged by intelligence officers or civilian contractors.
Karpinski oversaw the guards at U.S. detention facilities in Iraq, including those at Abu Ghraib. The 372nd reported to her. She alleged that she warned her superiors about the abuses, but she said "they just wanted it to go away." Karpinski claimed that requests for additional personnel and resources were ignored.
The 60 Minutes II broadcast
The prison gained further international notoriety in April 2004 when U.S. television network CBS broadcast an edition of its 60 Minutes II news-magazine that reported, and included photographs of, abuse and humiliation of inmates by a small group of U.S. soldiers. The report had been delayed by two weeks at the request of the Department of Defense and Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers, because of heavy fighting in Iraq. The prison commander was later replaced with Major-General Geoffrey Miller, who previously supervised the controversial Guantanamo Bay detention facility.
Former Marine Lt. Col. Bill Cowan in an interview with CBS said: "We went into Iraq to stop things like this from happening, and indeed, here they are happening under our tutelage".
U.S. President George W. Bush decried the acts and contended that they were in no way indicative of normal or acceptable practices in the United States Army.
Joint Chief Myers claimed on May 2 during a Face the Nation interview that he had not yet seen the Taguba report, although the report was then nearly a month old.
On May 7, United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld before the Senate Armed Services Committee made the following statements:
"These events occurred on my watch as secretary of defense. I am accountable for them. I take full responsibility,"
"I feel terrible about what happened to these detainees. They are human beings, they were in U.S. custody, our country had an obligation to treat them right. We didn't. That was wrong,"
"To those Iraqis who were mistreated by members of the U.S. armed forces, I offer my deepest apology."
"We're functioning in a -- with peacetime restraints, with legal requirements in a war-time situation, in the information age, where people are running around with digital cameras and taking these unbelievable photographs and then passing them off, against the law, to the media, to our surprise, when they had not even arrived in the Pentagon."
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Photos from Abu Ghraib | ||
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The pictures show the prisoners naked, being forced to engage in simulated oral sex and other sex acts, images of a female soldier, grinning and pointing at the genitals of a hooded naked prisoner. There is also a photo of a prisoner who appears to be dead. Aside from the published photographs, according to CBS and to Rumsfeld, the Army has many more of these photos, including one that shows a dog attacking a prisoner. One detainee has also made charges of rape under supervision of the soldiers. All of the alleged acts clearly violate the Third Geneva Convention regarding treatment of POWs, as do the photographs themselves.
Some of the soldiers in the photographs have been identified as Army Reserve members private Lynndie England and her fiancé, specialist Charles Graner. Both have been detained and demoted, but have not been discharged.
The report by General Antonio M. Taguba lists six suspects: Staff Sergeant Ivan (Chip) Frederick II, Specialist Charles A. Graner, Sergeant Javal Davis, Specialist Megan Ambuhl, Specialist Sabrina Harman, and Private Jeremy Sivits. They are facing charges that include conspiracy, dereliction of duty, cruelty toward prisoners, maltreatment, assault, and indecent acts. A seventh suspect, Private Lynndie England, became pregnant and was reassigned to Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
Personal accounts from the field
Hashem Muhsen, one of the naked men in the human pyramid photo, said they were also made to crawl around the floor naked and that U.S. soldiers rode them like donkeys. After being released in January 2004, Muhsen became an Iraqi police officer.
Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of coalition operations in Iraq, 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."
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The story and the photographs were carried as front-page news in many newspapers across the world and featured as the lead story on the broadcast media globally, causing outrage and dismay from many international observers. Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of the influential London-based Arabic newspaper Al Quds Al Arabi, said, "The liberators are worse than the dictators. This is the straw that broke the camel's back for America."
Joseph M. Darby reported that Frederick, on one occasion, "had punched a detainee in the chest so hard that the detainee almost went into cardiac arrest." In letters and e-mails to family members, Frederick repeatedly noted that the military-intelligence teams, which included C.I.A. officers and linguists and interrogation specialists from private defense contractors, were the dominant force inside Abu Ghraib.
Do the US soldiers' actions constitute torture?
The UN's Convention Against Torture defines torture in the following terms:
- any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him... information or a confession, punishing him for an act he... has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him. (Article 1)
From the perspective of this definition, the most relevant photograph is the first one shown on this page: the blindfold prisoner, standing on a box with electrical wires connected to various parts of his body. The prisoner was reportedly told that he would be electrocuted if he fell off the box. The army claims, however, that the wires were not live and that the prisoner at no time faced actual electrocution, only the threat thereof.
If the prisoner believed the deception and was sincerely convinced that he faced the possibility of execution, then the situation would seem to constitute "mental suffering" as defined in the Convention. The motivation of the act would also appear to have been to obtain a confession or to intimidate or coerce him – purposes referred to in Article 1. The gray area lies in the Convention's use of the adjective "severe" to qualify the suffering and the difficulties inherent in determining whether the suffering felt by the photographed prisoner was severe or mild.
In contrast, the actions shown in this photograph and most of the others would appear to constitute the "other acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" proscribed by article 16 of the Convention Against Torture.
Some of the acts decribed in the Taguba report qualify similarly.
According to the Convention at least some of the US soldiers' actions constitute torture.
Isolated incident or systematic failure or official policy?
Reaction from the US administration characterises the Abu Ghraib abuse as an isolated incident uncharacteristic of American actions in Iraq; this view is widely disputed, notably in Arab countries, but also by organisations such as the International Red Cross, which says that it has been making representations about abuse of prisoners for more than a year. A former military intelligence officer with experience at Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib alleges (see External Link - 'Cooks and drivers were working as interrogators') a systematic failure caused by a combination of inexperienced troops arresting innocent Iraqis, who are then interrogated by inexperienced interrogators determined to 'break' these apparent hard-cases.
Staff Sgt. Ivan L. "Chip" Frederick II, who faces a court marshall for Abu Ghraib, mailed his diary home. It lists detailed, dated entries that chronicle abuse and name names. An excerpt:
- They stressed him out so bad that the man passed away. The next day the medics came in and put his body on a stretcher, placed a fake I.V. in his arm [to suggest he died under medical care] and took him away. This OGA [prisoner] was never processed and therefore never had a number."
And also:
- MI has been present and witnessed such activity. MI has encouraged and told us great job [and] that they were now getting positive results and information.
See also General Taguba's report.
On 7 May 2004, International Committee of the Red Cross Operations Director Pierre Krähenbühl stated that the ICRC's inspection visits to Coalition detention centres in Iraq did "not allow us to conclude that what we were dealing with... were isolated acts of individual members of coalition forces. What we have described is a pattern and a broad system." He went on to say that some of the incidents they had observed were "tantamount to torture". [1] [[2]]
US and UK armed forces are jointly trained in so-called resistance to interrogation (R2I) techniques which are similar to those depicted in the photographs. These R2I techniques are taught ostensibly to help soldiers cope with or resist torture by the enemy but the lesson learnt, in this case at least, is how to torture. The Guardian May 8 2004. That report includes this paragraph:
- The US commander in charge of military jails in Iraq, Major General Geoffrey Miller, has confirmed that a battery of 50-odd special "coercive techniques" can be used against enemy detainees. The general, who previously ran the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, said his main role was to extract as much intelligence as possible.
Most accept the particular acts committed at the prison leading to the initial published reports were unauthorised, but as has been shown, they were not isolated incidents. These or similar incidents of torture and humiliation were routine, systemic and widespread, had been occurring for over a year, and some of them were official policy.
Other incidents
In November 2003, three female U.S. soldiers stationed at the Abu Ghraib prison were showering when they discovered captain Leo V. Merck on his hands and knees taking pictures of them with a digital camera. The next day, the women reported Merck to authorities. A search of his government computer uncovered many other inappropriate photos. Merck currently faces a court martial.
See also
- Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay
- Geneva Conventions
- Human rights situation in post-Saddam Iraq
- Humiliation
- Milgram experiment
- Stanford Prison Experiment
- My Lai Massacre
- Taguba Report - Wikisource
- Torture
- War crimes
External links
- Interview with Hayder Sabbar Abd, one of the abused prisoners, by The Guardian newspaper.
- 'Cooks and drivers were working as interrogators' - Article on systematic nature of US abuse of prisoners - The Guardian newspaper.
- Abu Ghurayb Prison - Iraq Security
- Abuse of Iraqi POWs by GIs probed. CBS, 60 Minutes report, April 29, 2004.
- Guantanamo on steroids. Report by Jen Banbury, Salon.com, March 3, 2004. Describes the situation at Abu Ghraib under US control before the abuse became publicly known.
- UK troops in Iraqi torture probe
- Torture at Abu Ghraib (New Yorker)
- Amnesty International has evidence of "pattern of torture" by coalition, Associated Press, May 2, 2004
- report by Amnesty International, March 18, 2004
- Amnesty International claims that the Abu Ghraib torture is not an isolated case April 30, 2004