One photo shows an Iraqi teenager bound and standing in the headlights of a truck immediately after his mock execution, staged by U.S. soldiers. Another shows a group of soldiers forcing a detainee to look at pictures of lingerie-clad women. Another depicts the body of Muhamad Husain Kadir, an Iraqi farmer, shot dead at point-blank range by an American soldier while handcuffed.
These are just three of thousands of photos related to cases of detainee abuse that our government refuses to release. We know little about the majority of these photos, but documents released to the ACLU over the last decade offer some clues to what they reveal. Today, on the 11th anniversary of the release of the Abu Ghraib photos, we're releasing everything we know about what's in the photos the government doesn't want us to see.
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Last month, indicating his impatience with the government's intransigence, U.S. District Court Judge Alvin Hellerstein ordered the government to "disclose each and all the photographs" relating to the ACLU's FOIA request — which includes some 2,100 pictures — or appeal the decision in 60 days. On May 19, the government will either release the photos or take the fight to the federal court of appeals.
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This spreadsheet details what we learned. The photos whose existence we discovered were taken at more than two dozen locations, mostly in U.S.-run detention facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are also some photos from the prison at Guantánamo Bay. Many of them document autopsies and injuries, often resulting from abuse either alleged or confirmed. Other photos document detention facilities; many others are mugshots.
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Take, for example, the 2003 case of a 73-year-old Iraqi woman, who was arrested and flown by helicopter to an unknown facility where she was allegedly tortured for five days by U.S. soldiers. During those five days, according to the investigation, she was reportedly sexually abused and assaulted and "made to crawl around on all-fours as a 'large man rode' on her," striking her with a stick and calling her an animal. The Army's investigation began eight months after the fact and was closed in June 2004 after it "did not develop sufficient evidence to prove or disprove" the woman's allegations.
In another 2003 case, an Iraqi detainee was delivered on the verge of death to a U.S. Army medical center in Al Asad, Iraq. The detainee suffered from blunt force injury to the head and died a few days later. Investigators determined the detainee had most likely been interrogated at Abu Ghraib immediately prior to his arrival at the hospital and that his injuries were likely a result of a violent interrogation. One officer wrote in an email that the case was "obviously a homicide." Yet the investigation was closed with the identity of both the Iraqi victim and those responsible for his death undetermined.
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