Judge Says U.S. Must Release Prison Photos

I have been wondering for months about the “unreleased photos” from Abu Ghraib. We all heard, from Seymour Hersh and others, that there were possibly hundreds more photographs than were released to the media, but for some reason they never emerged. Although it is difficult to see how releasing these images would compromise “national security,” I am sure that (or some similar rationale) will be used by the Defense Department to avoid making these embarrassing and incriminating images public. Perhaps they are witholding them out of concern for the dignity of the prisoners, although that seems highly doubtful. One can only hope that they see the light of day, and sooner than later.

A federal judge in New York told the Defense Department yesterday that it would have to release perhaps dozens of photographs taken by an American soldier of Iraqi detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

The judge, Alvin K. Hellerstein, said at a hearing that photographs would be the “best evidence” in the public debate about the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib. The hearing, in Federal District Court in Manhattan, came in a Freedom of Information Act suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union to obtain material about military prisons in Iraq and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

In response to the suit the government has already released more than 36,000 pages of documents that shed sometimes dramatic light on conditions and interrogation practices in American military prisons. The photographs covered by Judge Hellerstein’s decision would be the first released under the suit.

The judge focused on 144 photographs that were turned over to Army investigators last year by Specialist Joseph M. Darby, a reservist who was posted at Abu Ghraib. A small number of the pictures have already been published, including those showing naked detainees piled in a pyramid and simulating sex while their American military captors…

Posted by Gregoire
I was born in NYC, raised in Palo Alto CA, attended university at UC Santa Cruz. I spent the better part of a decade traveling in Asia and working in restaurants before entering graduate school in Tibetan and Buddhist Studies at UVA in Charlottesville VA,...