|
US faces more shock claims
09/05/2004 21:23 - (SA)
|
|
|
 |
|
| US soldiers with dogs surround an Iraqi detainee in this photo obtained by The New Yorker, allegedly taken in December 2003, at the Abu Ghraib prison. (AP, courtesy of The New Yorker) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Washington - Faced with the existence of hundreds of additional photos and at least two videos documenting gruesome details of Iraqi prisoner abuse, US officials struggled on Sunday to decide how best to release the next wave of devastating pictures.
Senator John Warner, the chief of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the Pentagon had assured him that digital pictures would be given to lawmakers but kept classified for the time being.
"I specifically talked to the Pentagon several times yesterday. They assured me that all the information will be forthcoming to the Congress, but it will be on disc, it will be kept in our room... because it is of a classified nature."
"When it may get into the public domain, I'm not able to answer that question."
But with many photos taken on digital cameras and in the hands of individual soldiers, new images were already making their way into US media, with The New Yorker magazine releasing a picture showing a naked prisoner cowering under threat from two US military dogs.
The latest picture of the now notorious Abu Ghraib prison was given to the magazine by a member of the 320th military police battalion.
Former prisoners seeing their pictures broadcast internationally have also begun to speak out, giving graphic narratives to the photos of naked and abused bodies.
Although their stories have yet to be confirmed, released prisoners told Time magazine that inmates at Abu Ghraib suffered beatings, sexual abuse and rape.
Mohammed Unis Hassan told the magazine he was arrested for looting a bank in July. He said he spent seven months in the prison, and was beaten with a cable or riot stick when he failed to say if he knew who was setting bombs around Baghdad.
He also said he saw a US soldier having regular sex with a female inmate, and that guards drank beer and whiskey in the halls.
Another released inmate, Haider Sabbar Abed al-Abbadi, told the magazine that US guards forced his friend to have oral sex with him while he was hooded. He said he knew pictures were being taken because even through the hood he could see the flashes going off.
Congress
Faced with even more graphic images leaking out, leading lawmakers from both parties called for all the pictures to be released as soon as Congress receives them.
"One thing I know about scandals: They go on and on and on until the American people feel they have a full and complete picture of what happened," Senator John McCain, who was himself a prisoner of war in Vietnam, told "Fox News Sunday."
"To hold back these pictures, or to hold back the videos and only show them to members of congress or something like that, first, is foolish, because they'll leak out, but second of all, it is sending the wrong signal," McCain said.
"All the information concerning this situation should be brought out completely, aired, ventilated. And the American people and perhaps people in the Arab world need to be convinced that we are never going to allow such a thing to happen again," McCain said.
Senator Carl Levin said the photos "absolutely" should be released to the public.
"It's best that this be seen for what it is," he said. "Any effort to hide this kind of material will not work."
"The only way that we can redeem ourselves is to enforce our values, and doing that in a very open, thorough and prompt process."
Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned lawmakers on Friday that hundreds more photographs and at least two videos of US soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners could worsen the scandal that has rocked the US military.
Rumsfeld said he and General Richard Myers, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, looked at all the images for the first time on Thursday night after days of trying to get copies from military investigators.
"If these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse. That's just a fact," Rumsfeld said on Friday.
"I mean, I looked at them last night, and they're hard to believe," he said.
- AFP
|
