Release them all!
by Iraqi Association of the Victims of American Occupation Prisons

The Association of the Victims of American Occupation Prisons (1h1050 NGO) was founded by Haj Ali, the former mayor of Abu Ghraib and the victim of US torture depicted on the photograph with the hood and the electrodes.

in the name of Allah, most gracious, most merciful
we have honoured the sons of Adam; provided them with transport on land and sea; given them for sustenance things good and pure; and conferred on them special favours, above a great part of our creation. (israa' / 70)

Washington Post Editorial
War Crimes

Thursday, December 23, 2004; Page A22

THANKS TO a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union and other human rights groups, thousands of pages of government documents released this month have confirmed some of the painful truths about the abuse of foreign detainees by the U.S. military and the CIA -- truths the Bush administration implacably has refused to acknowledge. Since the publication of photographs of abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison in the spring the administration's whitewashers -- led by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld -- have contended that the crimes were carried out by a few low-ranking reservists, that they were limited to the night shift during a few chaotic months at Abu Ghraib in 2003, that they were unrelated to the interrogation of prisoners and that no torture occurred at the Guantanamo Bay prison where hundreds of terrorism suspects are held. The new documents establish beyond any doubt that every part of this cover story is false.

Center for Constitutional Rights files lawsuit against private contractors for torture conspiracy - Charges that U.S. corporations conspired with officials to torture detainees in Iraq

Synopsis

Two U.S. corporations conspired with U.S. officials to humiliate, torture and abuse persons detained by U.S. authorities in Iraq according to a class action lawsuit filed June 9, 2004, by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the Philadelphia law firm of Montgomery, McCracken, Walker and Rhoads. The suit, filed in federal court in San Diego, names as defendants the Titan Corporation of San Diego, California and CACI International of Arlington, Virginia and its subsidiaries, and three individuals who work for the companies. It charges them with violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) and alleges that the companies engaged in a wide range of heinous and illegal acts in order to demonstrate their abilities to obtain intelligence from detainees, and thereby obtain more contracts from the government.

Torture of Iraqi POWs widespread: report
Military intelligence troops accused of abuses in 4 camps outside Abu Ghraib

WASHINGTON (AP) - Several U.S. guards allege they witnessed military intelligence operatives encouraging the abuse of Iraqi prison inmates at four prisons other than Abu Ghraib, investigative documents show.

Cuba Base Sent Its Interrogators to Iraqi Prison
By DOUGLAS JEHL and ANDREA ELLIOTT
May 29, 2004, NYT

WASHINGTON, May 28 — Interrogation experts from the American detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, were sent to Iraq last fall and played a major role in training American military intelligence teams at Abu Ghraib prison there, senior military officials said Friday.

U.S. using some Iraqis as bargaining chips
By Mohamad Bazzi
Middle East Correspondent
May 26, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- U.S. troops wanted Jeanan Moayad's father. When they couldn't find him, they took her husband in his place.

Abuse of Captives More Widespread, Says Army Survey
By DOUGLAS JEHL, STEVEN LEE MYERS and ERIC SCHMITT
May 26, 2004 NYT

WASHINGTON, May 25 — An Army summary of deaths and mistreatment involving prisoners in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan shows a widespread pattern of abuse involving more military units than previously known.

When is Prisoner Abuse Racial Violence
by Sherene Razack; May 24, 2004

My stomach contracts and I feel a deep chill in every  pore of my Brown skin when I see the prisoner abuse photos. I know that this is about racism. So why are so many publicly reluctant to say so? Or is it that we can't get our words into print? Only a  few people have noted that the photos remind them of prison abuse and police brutality of Black and Brown men in North America, and of  American military and covert operations in Latin America, the Caribbean, Vietnam and elsewhere. Most of these writers are  non-Western with the notable exception of  Washington Post staff writer Phillip Kennicott. Not mincing words, Kennicott maintains that "these pictures are pictures of colonial behavior, the demeaning of occupied people, the insult to local tradition, the humiliation of the vanquished." Using the words of Aime Cesaire, Kennicott actually names the abuse "race hatred."  The Egyptian writer Ahdaf Souief declares that the abuse reflects the "deep racism underlying the occupiers' attitudes to Arabs, Muslims and the third world generally." John Pilger calls it "modern imperial racism. " Recalling Vietnam, and the way that  the My Lai massacre is remembered only as a rare incident of exceptional violence, Pilger predicts that prisoner abuse in Iraq will come to be seen the same way,  as exceptional and unconnected to the national project of dominating racially inferior peoples. Two weeks into the scandal, the exceptional violence argument rules the day and the word racism is not even uttered as a possible contributing factor.

By Linda Burnham
War Times, www.war-times.org

The Abu Ghraib portraits of sexual humiliation and submission have exposed the unbelievably tangled strands of racism, misogyny, homophobia, national arrogance and hyper-masculinity that characterize the U.S. military. Militarized sexual domination is neither "contrary to American values" nor simply the work of a few "bad apples." It is, rather, a daily practice.

Brutal interrogation in Iraq
Five detainees' deaths probed
By Miles Moffeit
Denver Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 19, 2004 -

'VERY TROUBLING'

Pentagon records provide the clearest view yet of the U.S. tactics used at Anu Ghraib and elsewhere to coax secrets from Iraqis.

by John McMurtry, May 2004.

"The system works” - U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, May 3/04

Civilized Americans are outraged at the torture of Iraqui prisoners by U.S.
occupying forces, but not by what started it all - the illegal war of

Military Police Got Instructions at Iraqi Prison
By ERIC SCHMITT and DOUGLAS JEHL
NYT, May 18, 2004

WASHINGTON, May 17 — The American officer who was in charge of interrogations at the Abu Ghraib prison has told a senior Army investigator that intelligence officers sometimes instructed the military police to force Iraqi detainees to strip naked and to shackle them before questioning them. But he said those measures were not imposed "unless there is some good reason."

This is a very important artilce. Please check it out and read it carefully. It is an incredible expose of what was really going on in Abu Ghraib prison and why.

***

by Seymour M. Hersh. The New Yorker, 2004-05-24.

Rumsfeld accused on abuse
US defence secretary 'authorised tough intelligence programme'
Gary Younge in New Jersey and Luke Harding in Baghdad
Monday May 17, 2004
The Guardian

The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, personally authorised the expansion of a special programme which ultimately led to the abuses in Abu Ghraib prison, the New Yorker magazine claims today.

By Bob Wing

War Times newspaper, http://www.war-times.org

A friend of mine was discussing Abu Ghraib with his Egyptian father, who
had originally supported the war. Referring to the photo of the female

Article from Al Jazeera (English)

Saddam Salih says his US torturers told him he was one of the hooded Iraqi prisoners shown in a picture standing in a row as a grinning female soldier pointed at their genitals.

· Troops backed by tanks take on al-Sadr's men
· Release of 300 prisoners from Abu Ghraib begins
· Tribal chief and daughter killed in blast

From the guardian.co.uk Friday May 14, 2004

US soldiers backed by tanks moved onto sacred ground in the Iraqi holy city of Najaf today, pushing deep into its ancient cemetery in a fierce battle with insurgents loyal to anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Luke Harding in Baghdad
Wednesday May 12, 2004
The Guardian

For Huda Shaker, the humiliation began at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Baghdad. The American soldiers demanded to search her handbag. When she refused one of the soldiers pointed his gun towards her chest. "He pointed the laser sight directly in the middle of my chest," said Professor Shaker, a political scientist at Baghdad University. "Then he pointed to his penis. He told me, 'Come here, bitch, I'm going to fuck you.'"

By Ali Abunimah
Special to The Daily Star
Tuesday, May 11, 2004

CHICAGO, Illinois: The head of the American defense contracting firm implicated in the torture of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison has close ties to Israel and visited an Israeli "anti-terror" training camp in the occupied West Bank earlier this year.

By WAYNE MADSEN
counterpunch

With mounting evidence that a shadowy group of former Israeli Defense Force and General Security Service (Shin Bet) Arabic-speaking interrogators were hired by the Pentagon under a classified "carve out" sub-contract to brutally interrogate Iraqi prisoners at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, one only needs to examine the record of abuse of Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners in Israel to understand what Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld meant, when referring to new, yet to be released photos and videos, he said, "if these images are released to the public, obviously its going to make matters worse."

Bremer knew, minister claims

Luke Harding in Baghdad
Monday May 10, 2004
The Guardian
Iraq's first human rights minister launched a blistering attack yesterday on America's chief administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, saying that he had warned him repeatedly last year that US soldiers were abusing Iraqi detainees.

This photo was just released by the New Yorker magazine.

Pictures revealed by CBS, the New Yorker and the Washington Post reveal that torture of Iraqi prisoners has been official US policy in Iraq.

Israeli lessons for the US in Iraq

by Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank
Thursday 06 May 2004 6:48 PM GMT

Thousands of Palestinians say they were tortured by Israel

The torturing of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghuraib prison by US occupying forces has shocked the world - but for most Palestinians they come as no surprise.

US military confirms existence of horrific pictures and video

By Andrew Buncombe in Washington

09 May 2004

The Bush administration was bracing itself last night for the release of new pictures and video footage from Abu Ghraib which show US soldiers having sex with an Iraqi woman prisoner, troops almost beating a prisoner to death, and the rape of young boys by Iraqi guards at the jail.

Just Go...

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com

People are seething with anger- the pictures of Abu Ghraib and the Brits in Basrah are everywhere. Every newspaper you pick up in Baghdad has pictures of some American or British atrocity or another. It's like a nightmare that has come to life.

UK forces taught torture methods
David Leigh
Saturday May 8, 2004
The Guardian

The sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison was not an invention of maverick guards, but part of a system of ill-treatment and degradation used by special forces soldiers that is now being disseminated among ordinary troops and contractors who do not know what they are doing, according to British military sources.

Red Cross accuses U.S. of gross abuses
Unarmed prisoners shot, beaten to death, aid organization says

ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS
ASSOCIATED PRESS

GENEVA - The international Red Cross said today it had warned U.S. officials of abuse of prisoners in Iraq more than a year ago.

Soldiers Back in U.S. Tell of More Iraqi Abuses
Thu May 6, 2004 10:40 PM ET

By Adam Tanner

ANTIOCH, California (Reuters) - Three U.S. military policemen who served at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison said on Thursday they had witnessed unreported cases of prisoner abuse and that the practice against Iraqis was commonplace.

By Alan Elsner

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two Iraqi prisoners were murdered by Americans and 23 other deaths are being investigated in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States revealed on Tuesday as the Bush administration tried to contain growing outrage over the abuse of Iraqi detainees.

By Robert Fis, May 4th, 2004. Why are we surprised at their racism, their brutality, their sheer callousness towards Arabs? Those American soldiers in Saddam's old prison at Abu Ghraib, those young British squaddies in Basra came -- as soldiers often come -- from towns and cities where race hatred has a home: Tennessee and Lancashire.