During the early stages of the Iraq War, members of the United States Army and the Central Intelligence Agency committed a series of human rights violations and war crimes against detainees in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. These abuses included physical abuse, sexual humiliation, physical and psychological torture, and rape, as well as the killing of Manadel al-Jamadi and the desecration of his body. The abuses came to public attention with the publication of photographs by CBS News in April 2004, causing shock and outrage and receiving widespread condemnation within the United States and internationally.
The George W. Bush administration stated that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were isolated incidents and not indicative of U.S. policy. This was disputed by humanitarian organizations including the Red Cross, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch, who claimed the abuses were part of a pattern of torture and brutal treatment at American overseas detention centers, including those in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and at Guantanamo Bay (GTMO). After 36 prisoners were killed at Abu Ghraib in insurgent mortar attacks, the United States was further criticized for maintaining the facility in a combat zone. The International Committee of the Red Cross reported that most detainees at Abu Ghraib were civilians with no links to armed groups.
Documents known as the Torture Memos came to light a few years later. These documents, prepared by the United States Department of Justice in the months leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, authorized the use of certain torture techniques ("enhanced interrogation techniques") on foreign detainees. The memoranda also argued that international humanitarian laws, such as the Geneva Conventions, did not apply to American interrogators overseas. Several subsequent U.S. Supreme Court decisions, including Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006), overturned Bush administration policy, ruling that the Geneva Conventions do apply.
In response to the events at Abu Ghraib, the United States Department of Defense removed 17 soldiers and officers from duty. Eleven soldiers were charged with dereliction of duty, maltreatment, aggravated assault and battery. Between May 2004 and April 2006, these soldiers were court-martialed, convicted, sentenced to military prison, and dishonorably discharged from service. Two soldiers, found to have perpetrated many of the worst offenses at the prison, Specialist Charles Graner and PFC Lynndie England, were subject to more severe charges and received harsher sentences. Graner was convicted of assault, battery, conspiracy, maltreatment of detainees, committing indecent acts and dereliction of duty; he was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment and loss of rank, pay, and benefits. England was convicted of conspiracy, maltreatment of detainees, and committing an indecent act and sentenced to three years in prison. Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, the commanding officer of all detention facilities in Iraq, was reprimanded and demoted to the rank of colonel. Several more military personnel accused of perpetrating or authorizing the measures, including many of higher rank, were not prosecuted. In 2004, President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld apologized for the Abu Ghraib abuses.
Background
War on terror
The war on terror, also known as the Global War on Terrorism, is an international military campaign launched by the United States government after the September 11 attacks. U.S. President George W. Bush first used the phrase "war on terrorism" on September 16, 2001, and then used the phrase "war on terror" a few days later in a speech to Congress. In the latter speech, Bush stated, "Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists and every government that supports them."
Iraq War
The Iraq War began in March 2003 as an invasion of Ba'athist Iraq by a force led by the United States. The Ba'athist government led by Saddam Hussein was toppled within a month. This conflict was followed by a longer phase of fighting in which an insurgency emerged to oppose the occupying forces and the post-invasion Iraqi government. During this insurgency, the United States was in the role of an occupying power.
Abu Ghraib prison
Abu Ghraib prison in the town of Abu Ghraib was one of the most notorious prisons in Iraq during the government of Saddam Hussein. The prison was used to hold approximately 50,000 men and women in poor conditions, and torture and execution were frequent. The prison was located on about 110 hectares (272 acres) of land 32 kilometers (20 miles) west of Baghdad. After the collapse of Saddam Hussein's government, the prison was looted and everything that was removable was carried away. Following the invasion, the U.S. army refurbished it and turned it into a military prison. It was the largest of several detention centers in Iraq used by the U.S. military. In March 2004, during the time that the U.S. military was using Abu Ghraib prison as a detention facility, it housed approximately 7,490 prisoners. At its peak, it held an estimated 8,000 detainees.
Three categories of prisoners were imprisoned at Abu Ghraib by the U.S. military. These were "common criminals", individuals suspected of being leaders of the insurgency, and individuals suspected of committing crimes against the occupational force led by the U.S. Although most prisoners lived in tents in the yard, the abuses took place inside cell blocks 1a and 1b. The 800th Military Police Brigade, from Uniondale, New York, was responsible for running the prison. The brigade was commanded by Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, who was in charge of all of the U.S.-run prisons in Iraq. She did not have previous experience in running a prison. The individuals who committed abuses at the prison were members of the 372nd Military Police Company, which was a constituent of the 320th Military Police Battalion, which was overseen by Karpinski's Brigade headquarters.
The Fay Report noted that "contracting-related issues contributed to the problems at Abu Ghraib prison". Over half the interrogators working at the prison were employees of CACI International, while Titan Corporation supplied linguistics personnel. In his report, General Fay notes that "The general policy of not contracting for intelligence functions and services was designed in part to avoid many of the problems that eventually developed at Abu Ghraib".
First reports of human rights abuses
In June 2003, Amnesty International published reports of human rights abuses by the U.S. military and its coalition partners at detention centers and prisons in Iraq. These included reports of brutal treatment at Abu Ghraib prison, which had once been used by the government of Saddam Hussein, and had been taken over by the United States after the invasion. On June 20, 2003, Abdel Salam Sidahmed, deputy director of AI's Middle East Program, described an uprising by the prisoners against the conditions of their detention, saying "The notorious Abu Ghraib Prison, centre of torture and mass executions under Saddam Hussein, is yet again a prison cut off from the outside world. On June 13, there was a protest in this prison against indefinite detention without trial. Troops from the occupying powers killed one person and wounded seven."
On July 23, 2003, Amnesty International issued a press release condemning widespread human rights abuses by U.S. and coalition forces. The release stated that prisoners had been exposed to extreme heat, not provided clothing, and forced to use open trenches for toilets. They had also been tortured, with the methods including denial of sleep for extended periods, exposure to bright lights and loud music, and being restrained in uncomfortable positions.
On November 1, 2003, the Associated Press presented a special report on the massive human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib. Their report began; "In Iraq's American detention camps, forbidden talk can earn a prisoner hours bound and stretched out in the sun, and detainees swinging tent poles rise up regularly against their jailers, according to recently released Iraqis." The report went on to describe abuse of the prisoners at the hands of their American captors: "'They confined us like sheep,' the newly freed Saad Naif, 38, said of the Americans. 'They hit people. They humiliated people.'" In response, U.S. Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, who oversaw all U.S. detention facilities in Iraq, claimed that prisoners were being treated "humanely and fairly". The AP report also stated that as of November 1, 2003, two legal cases were pending against U.S. military personnel; one involving the beating of an Iraqi prisoner, while the other arose out of the death of a prisoner in custody.
Since the beginning of the invasion, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had been allowed to oversee the prison, and submitted reports about the treatment of the prisoners. In response to an ICRC report, Karpinski stated that several of the prisoners were intelligence assets, and therefore not entitled to complete protection under the Geneva Conventions. The ICRC reports led to Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of the Iraqi task force, appointing Major General Antonio Taguba to investigate the allegations on January 1, 2004. Taguba submitted his findings (the Taguba Report) in February 2004, stating that "numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees. This systemic and illegal abuse of detainees was intentionally perpetrated by several members of the military police guard force." The report stated that there was widespread evidence of this abuse, including photographic evidence. The report was not released publicly.
The scandal came to widespread public attention in April 2004, when a 60 Minutes II news report was aired on April 28 by CBS News, describing the abuse, including pictures showing military personnel taunting naked prisoners. An article was published by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker magazine, posted online on April 30 and published days later in the May 10 issue, which also had a widespread impact. The photographs were subsequently reproduced in the press across the world. The details of the Taguba report were made public in May 2004. Shortly afterwards, U.S. President George W. Bush stated that the individuals responsible would be "brought to justice", while United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said that the effort to reconstruct a government in Iraq had been badly damaged.
Authorization of torture
Executive order
On December 21, 2004, the American Civil Liberties Union released copies of internal memoranda from the Federal Bureau of Investigation that it had obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. These discussed torture and abuse at prisons in Guantanamo Bay detention camp, Afghanistan, and Iraq. One memorandum dated May 22, 2004 was from an individual described as the "On Scene Commander – Baghdad", but whose name had been redacted. This individual referred explicitly to an executive order that sanctioned the use of extraordinary interrogation tactics by U.S. military personnel. The torture methods sanctioned included sleep deprivation, hooding prisoners, playing loud music, removing all detainees' clothing, forcing them to stand in so-called "stress positions", and the use of dogs. The author also stated that the Pentagon had limited use of the techniques by requiring specific authorization from the chain of command. The author identifies "physical beatings, sexual humiliation or touching" as being outside the Executive Order. This was the first internal evidence since the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse affair became public in April 2004 that forms of coercion of captives had been mandated by the president of the United States.
Authorization from Ricardo Sanchez
Documents obtained by The Washington Post and the ACLU showed that Ricardo Sanchez, who was a Lieutenant General and the senior U.S. military officer in Iraq, authorized the use of military dogs, temperature extremes, reversed sleep patterns, and sensory deprivation as interrogation methods in Abu Ghraib. A November 2004 report by Brigadier General Richard Formica found that many troops at Abu Ghraib prison had been following orders based on a memorandum from Sanchez, and that the abuse had not been carried out by isolated "criminal" elements. ACLU lawyer Amrit Singh said in a statement from the union that "General Sanchez authorized interrogation techniques that were in clear violation of the Geneva Conventions and the army's own standards." In an interview for her hometown newspaper The Signal, Karpinski stated that she had seen unreleased documents from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld which authorized the use of these tactics on Iraqi prisoners.
Authorization from Donald Rumsfeld
A 2004 report by the New Yorker stated that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had authorized the interrogation tactics used in Abu Ghraib, and which had previously been used by the U.S. in Afghanistan. In November 2006, Janis Karpinski, who had been in charge of Abu Ghraib prison until early 2004, told Spain's El País newspaper that she had seen a letter signed by Rumsfeld, which allowed civilian contractors to use techniques such as sleep deprivation during interrogation. "The methods consisted of making prisoners stand for long periods, sleep deprivation... playing music at full volume, having to sit in uncomfortably ... Rumsfeld authorized these specific techniques." According to Karpinski, the handwritten signature was above his printed name, and the comment "Make sure this is accomplished" was in the margin in the same hand-writing. Neither the Pentagon nor U.S. Army spokespeople in Iraq commented on the accusation. In 2006, a criminal complaint was filed in a German Court against Donald Rumsfeld by eight former soldiers and intelligence operatives, including Karpinski and former army counterintelligence special agent David DeBatto. Among other things, the complaint stated that Rumsfeld both knew of and authorized so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" that he knew to be illegal under international law.
Prisoner abuse
Death of Manadel al-Jamadi
Manadel al-Jamadi, a prisoner at Abu Ghraib prison, died after CIA officer Mark Swanner and Sabrina Harman interrogated and tortured him in November 2003. After al-Jamadi's death, his corpse was packed in ice; the corpse was in the background for widely reprinted photographs of grinning U.S. Army specialists Sabrina Harman and Charles Graner, each of whom offered a "thumbs-up" gesture. Al-Jamadi had been a suspect in a bomb attack that killed 12 people in a Baghdad Red Cross facility, even though there was no confirmation of his involvement in these attacks. A military autopsy declared al-Jamadi's death a homicide. No one has been charged with his death. In 2011, Attorney General Eric Holder said that he had opened a full criminal investigation into al-Jamadi's death. In August 2012, Holder announced that no criminal charges would be brought.
Prisoner rape
Stripping prisoners of their clothes was a common form of sexual humiliation and degradation during the torture at Abu Ghraib. In 2004, Antonio Taguba, a major general in the U.S. Army, wrote in the Taguba Report that a detainee had been sodomized with "a chemical light and perhaps a broomstick." In 2009, Taguba stated that there was photographic evidence of American soldiers and translators having raped detainees at Abu Ghraib. An Abu Ghraib detainee told investigators that he heard an Iraqi teenage boy screaming, and saw an Army translator raping him, while a female soldier took pictures. A witness identified the alleged rapist as an American-Egyptian who worked as a translator. In 2009, he was the subject of a civil court case in the United States. Another photo shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner. Other photos show interrogators sexually assaulting prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube, and a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts. Taguba supported United States President Barack Obama's decision not to release the photos, stating, "These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency." Obama, who had initially agreed to release the photographs, changed his mind after lobbying from senior military figures; Obama stated that their release could put troops in danger and "inflame anti-American public opinion".
In other instances of sexual abuse, soldiers were found to have raped female inmates. Senior U.S. officials admitted that rape had taken place at Abu Ghraib. Some of the women who had been raped became pregnant, and in some cases, were later killed by their family members in what were thought to be instances of honor killing. In addition, journalist Seymour Hersh alleged in July 2004 that the Department of Defense had in its possession videos showing male children being raped by Iraqi prison staff in front of female prisoners.
Other abuses
In May 2004, The Washington Post reported evidence given by Ameen Saeed Al-Sheikh, detainee No. 151362. It quoted him as saying; "They said we will make you wish to die and it will not happen ... They stripped me naked. One of them told me he would rape me. He drew a picture of a woman to my back and made me stand in a shameful position holding my buttocks apart." "'Do you pray to Allah?' one asked. I said yes. They said, '[Expletive] you. And [expletive] him.' One of them said, 'You are not getting out of here healthy, you are getting out of here handicapped. And he said to me, 'Are you married?' I said, 'Yes.' They said, 'If your wife saw you like this, she will be disappointed.' One of them said, 'But if I saw her now she would not be disappointed now because I would rape her.'" "They ordered me to thank Jesus that I'm alive." "I said to him, 'I believe in Allah.' So he said, 'But I believe in torture and I will torture you.'"
On January 12, 2005, The New York Times reported on further testimony from Abu Ghraib detainees. The abuses reported included urinating on detainees, pounding wounded limbs with metal batons, pouring phosphoric acid on detainees, and tying ropes to the detainees' legs or penises and dragging them across the floor.
In her video diary, a prison guard said that prisoners were shot for minor misbehavior, and claimed to have had venomous snakes used to bite prisoners, sometimes resulting in their deaths. The guard said that she was "in trouble" for having thrown rocks at the detainees. Hashem Muhsen, one of the naked prisoners in the human pyramid photo, later said the men were also forced to crawl around the floor naked while soldiers rode them like donkeys.
Systematic torture
On May 7, 2004, Pierre Krähenbühl, operations director for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), stated that inspection visits made by the ICRC to detention centers run by the US and its allies showed that acts of prisoner abuse were not isolated acts, but were part of a "pattern and a broad system". He went on to say that some of the incidents they had observed were "tantamount to torture".
Many of the torture techniques used were developed at Guantánamo detention center, including prolonged isolation; the frequent flyer program, a sleep deprivation program whereby people were moved from cell to cell every few hours so they could not sleep for days, weeks, or even months; short shackling in painful positions; nudity; extreme use of heat and cold; the use of loud music and noise; and preying on phobias.
Armed forces in the US and the UK are jointly trained in techniques known as resistance to interrogation (R2I) techniques. These R2I techniques are taught ostensibly to help soldiers cope with, or resist, torture if they are captured. On May 8, 2004, The Guardian reported that according to a former British special forces officer, the acts committed by the Abu Ghraib prison military personnel resembled the techniques used in R2I training.
The same report stated the following:
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 Guantanamo Bay, said his main role was to extract as much intelligence as possible.
Historian Alfred W. McCoy, who authored a book on torture in the Philippines armed forces, noted similarities in the abusive treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and the techniques described in the KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation manual published by the United States Central Intelligence Agency in 1963. He asserts that what he calls "the CIA's no-touch torture methods" have been in continuous use by the CIA and the US military intelligence since that time.
Casualties
A 2006 study attempted to estimate the number of deaths by reviewing public domain reports, as the US government had not provided total figures. It counted 63 detainee deaths at Abu Ghraib from all causes. Of these, 36 occurred due to insurgent mortar attacks, others were due to natural causes and homicide.
The issue of deaths due to mortar attack received criticism. The Geneva Convention requires prisoners not be kept at facilities vulnerable to artillery attack. As Abu Ghraib was located in the combat zone, its vulnerability to such an attack had been raised early on, but ultimately it was decided to keep the prisoners there. No other US detention facility in Iraq suffered casualties due to mortar attacks.
Media coverage
Associated Press report (2003)
On November 1, 2003, the Associated Press published a lengthy report on inhumane treatment, beatings, and deaths at Abu Ghraib and other American prisons in Iraq. This report was based on interviews with released detainees, who told journalist Charles J. Hanley that inmates had been attacked by dogs, made to wear hoods, and humiliated in other ways. The article gained little notice. One freed detainee said that he wished somebody would publish pictures of what was happening.
When the US military first acknowledged the abuse in early 2004, much of the United States media showed little initial interest. On January 16, 2004, United States Central Command informed the media that an official investigation had begun involving abuse and humiliation of Iraqi detainees by a group of US soldiers. On February 24, it was reported that 17 soldiers had been suspended. The military announced on March 21, 2004, that the first charges had been filed against six soldiers.
60 Minutes II broadcast (2004)
In late April 2004, the U.S. television news-magazine 60 Minutes II, a franchise of CBS, broadcast a story on the abuse. The story included photographs depicting the abuse of prisoners. The news segment was delayed by two weeks at the request of the Department of Defense and Richard Myers, an air force general and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. After learning that The New Yorker magazine planned to publish an article and photographs on the topic in its next issue, CBS proceeded to broadcast its report on April 28. In the CBS report, Dan Rather interviewed then-deputy director of Coalition operations in Iraq, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, who said:
The first thing I'd say is we're appalled as well. These are our fellow soldiers. These are the people we work with every day, and they represent us. They wear the same uniform as us, and they let their fellow soldiers down ... Our soldiers could be taken prisoner as well. And we expect our soldiers to be treated well by the adversary, by the enemy. And if we can't hold ourselves up as an example of how to treat people with dignity and respect ... We can't ask that other nations do that to our soldiers as well. ... So what would I tell the people of Iraq? This is wrong. This is reprehensible. But this is not representative of the 150,000 soldiers that are over here ... I'd say the same thing to the American people ... Don't judge your army based on the actions of a few.
Kimmitt also acknowledged that he knew of other cases of abuse during the American occupation of Iraq. Bill Cowan, a former Marine lieutenant colonel, was also interviewed, and said: "We went into Iraq to stop things like this from happening, and indeed, here they are happening under our tutelage." In addition, Rather interviewed Army Reserve Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick, who was party to some of the abuses. Frederick's civilian job was as a corrections officer at a Virginia prison. He said, "We had no support, no training whatsoever. And I kept asking my chain of command for certain things ... like rules and regulations, and it just wasn't happening." Frederick's video diary, sent home from Iraq, provided some of the images used in the story. In it, he listed detailed, dated entries that chronicled abuse of CIA prisoners, as well as their names: "The next day the medics came in and put his body on a stretcher, placed a fake [intravenous drip] in his arm and took him away. This [CIA prisoner] was never processed and therefore never had a number." Frederick implicated the Military Intelligence Corps as well, saying "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."
New Yorker article (2004)
In 2004, Seymour M. Hersh authored an article in The New Yorker magazine discussing the abuses in detail, relying on a copy of the Taguba report for substantiation. Under the direction of editor David Remnick, the magazine also posted a report on its website by Hersh, along with a number of images of the torture taken by U.S. military prison guards. The article, entitled "Torture at Abu Ghraib", was followed in the next two weeks by two further articles on the same subject, "Chain of Command" and "The Gray Zone", also by Hersh.
Later coverage (2006)
In February 2006, previously unreleased photos and videos were broadcast by SBS, an Australian television network, on its Dateline program. The Bush administration attempted to prevent release of the images in the U.S., arguing that their publication could provoke antagonism. These newly released photographs depicted prisoners crawling on the floor naked, being forced to perform sexual acts, and being covered in feces. Some images also showed prisoners killed by the soldiers, some shot in the head and some with slit throats. BBC World News stated that one of the prisoners, who was reportedly mentally unstable, was considered by prison guards as a "pet" for torture. The UN expressed hope that the pictures would be investigated immediately, but the Pentagon stated that the images "have been previously investigated as part of the Abu Ghraib investigation."
On March 15, 2006, Salon published what was then the most extensive documentation of the abuse. A report accessed by Salon included the following summary of the material: "A review of all the computer media submitted to this office revealed a total of 1,325 images of suspected detainee abuse, 93 video files of suspected detainee abuse, 660 images of adult pornography, 546 images of suspected dead Iraqi detainees, 29 images of soldiers in simulated sexual acts, 20 images of a soldier with a Swastika drawn between his eyes, 37 images of Military Working dogs being used in abuse of detainees and 125 images of questionable acts."
Coverage in arts
Fine arts
In 2004, the International Center of Photography in New York and The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh presented the photo exhibition "Inconvenient Evidence".