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US paper publishes more photos
21/05/2004 12:10 - (SA)
Washington - Iraqi prisoners said they were sexually fondled by female soldiers and forced to eat food from toilets in documents described by The Washington Post on Friday that included hundreds of new photos and short video clips of torture by US military at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib jail.
The paper said the testimony of abuse obtained from 13 Iraqi detainees, as well as hundreds of photographs and short digital video clips, are part of evidence gathered by army investigators for the courts martial in Iraq of seven US soldiers charged with abusing detainees.
A Defence Department spokesperson told the daily that the description of the photos and video clips seemed to match that of the graphic material shown privately to US lawmakers earlier this month.
The photographs and videos, which the daily said did not shed light on who directed the abuse at Abu Ghraib show detainees cowering before unmuzzled dogs, being forced to masturbate, being hit or sexually assaulted by guards, threatened by a shotgun.
Smeared
Six photographs printed on The Washington Post website include one of a naked prisoner smeared with what appeared to be excrement being forced to walk a straight line in front of a baton-wielding guard.
In another one, a detainee wearing an orange prison uniform is seen kneeling with his hands apparently tied behind his back as a large, black dog restrained with both hands by his handler snarls only a metre or so from his face.
A hooded prisoner in his underwear, in another picture, stands on two boxes with his back to a wall, bending over grasping the back of his knees.
A prison guard wearing green gloves is apparently threatening to punch in the head one of several detainees bound hand and foot he has before him on the floor in another photograph.
Another picture shows a prisoner wearing a blanket and a hood and slumped over a railing to which he is handcuffed.
The sworn statements given to US army investigators by the detainees between January 16 and 21 seem to corroborate some of the images, said the daily.
Food from toilets
In the 65 pages of testimony, the detainees describe being ridden like animals by prison guards, sexually fondled by female soldiers and forced to retrieve food from their toilets.
"They forced us to walk like dogs on our hands and knees," said Hiadar Sabar Abed Miktub al-Aboodi, detainee No. 13077.
"And we had to bark like a dog, and if we didn't do that they started hitting us hard on our face and chest with no mercy. After that, they took us to our cells, took the mattresses out and dropped water on the floor and they made us sleep on our stomachs on the floor with the bags on our head and they took pictures of everything."
Many of the detainees said they were forced to strip naked on their arrival at the prison and remained naked for several days at a time, with some forced to wear women's underwear.
One detainee said he witnessed a US Army translator having sex with a boy of between 15 and 18 at the prison, who shouted in pain.
Provided names
Another detainee described US Army Specialist Charles Graner and other US soldiers sodomising another detainee with a phosphoric light.
The detainees provided the names of three US soldiers, two of whom - Graner and Sergeant Javal Davis - are among the US soldiers facing courts martial for the abuse of prisoners.
Yet another detainee said he was kept naked for five days, forced to kneel for four hours with a hood over his head, badly beaten, forced to crawl as he was spat upon, and finally sodomised by a US soldiers with a nightstick.
Another detainee described how US soldiers forced him and several other detainees to form a human pyramid.
Al-Zayiadi described how he was forced to stand on a box wearing only a blanket and a hood with electric wires sticking out of his body, in what has become one of the iconic photographs of the prisoner abuse scandal.
Graner, he said "brought a box of food and he made me stand on it with no clothing, except a blanket. Then a tall black soldier came and put electrical wires on my fingers and toes and on my penis, and I had a bag over my head."
- AFP
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