US: A second wave of horrific photographs showing extreme abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers is expected to burst forth in the US media this week, fuelling further outrage and raising more questions about who gave the orders.
The pictures are reported to include US soldiers almost beating a prisoner to death, the rape of boys by Iraqi guards, American guards having sex with each other and with an Iraqi woman, and a soldier acting inappropriately with a dead body.
After reviewing hundreds of unpublished pictures and videos over the weekend, the Pentagon has agreed to provide them to the Senate Armed Services committee for viewing, possibly today. "When it may get into the public domain, I'm not able to answer that question," the committee chairman, Senator John Warner, said yesterday.
New photographs of cruelty at Abu Ghraib prison, outside Baghdad, surfaced in today's New Yorker magazine. Taken by two digital cameras they show a naked and terrified prisoner cowering against a cell door as German Shepards bark a few feet away, then the Iraqi writhing on the ground, blood streaming from his leg and a soldier sitting on top of him. New Yorker reporter Seymour Hersh said the pictures were in the possession of a member of the 320th Military Police Battalion and the people were different from the six military police in the first series of pictures, who have since been charged with criminal offences.
Speculation is growing that the use of cameras was deliberate so that other prisoners could be shown the humiliation they could expect if they did not talk. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the Bush administration needs to make public the additional photos as soon as possible. "If there's more to come, let's get it out," he said.
The disclosure that military intelligence took over Abu Ghraib prison in November has fuelled charges that the military police in the photographs were acting on orders from intelligence or the CIA. A solider dressed like a guard in one photograph of naked Iraqis tied together has been identified as a civilian contractor acting as a CIA interrogator.
On November 19th, Gen Ricardo Sanchez, head of the US military command in Iraq, ordered that Abu Ghraib be put under the control of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade which controls interrogations, something the Army inquiry into Abu Ghraib considered a mistake.
"Interrogators actively requested that MP guards set physical and mental conditions for favourable interrogation of witnesses," the report by Gen Antonio Taguba said.
These methods were imported to Iraq by Gen Geoffrey Miller from the US prison camp at Guantanamo, Cuba, where he encouraged guards to assist in the interrogation process. The classified techniques on Guantanamo are reported to include stripping prisoners and subjecting them to sensory deprivation.
"It is essential that the guard force be actively engaged in setting the conditions for successful exploitation of the internees," Gen Miller concluded after a visit to Abu Ghraib last year.
The Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Pat Roberts, said yesterday he did not want to believe, but "may be forced to believe it", that the orders came in the command structure and the abuse was not the work of a few individuals.
Mr Guy Womack, the lawyer for army reservist Charles Graner, charged with several acts of abuse, said that Graner was under orders from military intelligence and other agencies like the CIA and civilian intelligence contractors, and it was an "outrage" that officers in command were getting only reprimands.
The Senate Armed Services Committee ranking Democrat, Senator Carl Levin, said the abuse at Abu Ghraib was a "systemic problem" and the military intelligence and CIA "have got to be held accountable, right up the chain".
Meanwhile the Pentagon has released further details of prisoner deaths in Iraq from a total of 25 in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In November 2003, Gen Abed Hamed Mowhoush, a former commander of Saddam Hussein's air defences, died during interrogation. The same month three detainees at Abu Ghraib were shot dead, allegedly during a riot, and one was killed during interrogation. In September a soldier shot a prisoner said to be throwing stones at him. In June a prisoner, Ala'Jassem Sa'ad, was shot in his tent during a riot.
In June a reservist broke the neck of detainee Nagem Sadoon Hatab. In March a marine shot dead an Iraqi prisoner said to be trying to take his gun.