Pics 'not breaching convention'

2004-05-21 20:56

Geneva - Releasing further photographs of prisoners being abused by United States forces in Iraq probably wouldn't breach the Geneva Conventions as long as the inmates couldn't be identified, the international Red Cross said on Friday.

Florian Westphal, spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said: "My interpretation would be that you are not exposing them to 'public curiosity' if their faces are obscured."

The Geneva Conventions on the conduct of war ban exposing prisoners of war to "public curiosity".

US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said this regulation would forbid the government from distributing photographs that show Iraqi detainees being humiliated or abused at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib Prison.

Westphal declined to comment directly on whether Rumsfeld could release all the pictures provided the faces of the detainees were obscured, but said that "blurring faces might be a good way" to ensure that detainees can't be recognised in pictures.

Cornered inmate is cowering

The Washington Post on Friday published new photographs of prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib, but Westphal said the paper had not breached the Geneva Conventions even though the face of one detainee was clearly visible, because only governments were bound by the treaties.

It is up to governments to pass the sort of legislation that would prevent the media from publishing photos that breached the Geneva Conventions, he said.

In the Washington Post's front-page photo, a cornered inmate is cowering in the face of a US soldier restraining a large black dog. The inmate's face is clearly visible.

In other pictures, however, faces are obscured, blurred or hidden by hoods.

The photographs include images of a US soldier apparently preparing to strike a shackled detainee and a hooded inmate collapsed with his wrists handcuffed to the railing.

Another shows a baton-wielding soldier appearing to order a naked detainee covered in a brown substance to walk a straight line, although his ankles are shackled.

"What we say is that in order to protect the dignity of detainees, they should not be shown to public curiosity," said ICRC spokesperson Nada Doumani, speaking from Amman, Jordan.

"But we aren't going to make a big story of this. The problem now is not in publishing the picture as much as in what has happened in the prison."

Never comments on conditions in prisons

The neutral, Swiss-run ICRC is designated in the Geneva Conventions as their guardian, and ICRC delegates visit detainees across the globe.

The agency often speaks out on the legality of government actions under international humanitarian law, but never comments on the conditions it finds in prisons in order to ensure continued access.

Earlier this month, however, an ICRC report on conditions in Iraqi prisons was leaked, and the agency acknowledged that it had been demanding improvements for more than a year.

Coalition forces have met some of the demands, but others remain a concern, it said.

- AP