More Abu Ghraib photos come to light

WASHINGTON — New photos emerged Wednesday that showed U.S. soldiers abusing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in 2003, and Bush administration officials warned that they could add to Muslim anger at the United States.

Many of the pictures broadcast by Australia's Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), including some that appear to show corpses, were more graphic than those previously published. SBS would not say where it obtained the photos, which were picked up quickly by other media organizations in the United States and abroad.

In the Middle East, Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya TV aired some of the Australian station's footage but refrained from using the most shocking and sexually explicit images. CNN also broadcast excerpts.

The photos included images of detainees who were hooded and shackled in "stress positions" and who were being threatened by military working dogs. Other images showed corpses, and detainees who were bloodied and injured, including one who had been bitten by a dog. Some of the men appear to have cigarette burns on their arms and buttocks.

The photos also included a violent riot at the prison that was quelled with both lethal and nonlethal ammunition, resulting in prisoner deaths, and the treatment of a mentally ill detainee who often injured himself. The release of the photos came amid protests by Muslims around the world over Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad and a London newspaper's publication of photos showing British soldiers beating Iraqi prisoners.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the Abu Ghraib images "could only further inflame and possibly incite unnecessary violence in the world" and endanger U.S. troops. Pentagon officials emphasized that the photographs had been part of investigations that led to punishment of military police soldiers who worked at the prison.

Whitman said 25 servicemen and women have been prosecuted over criminal acts associated with prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib and that the scandal had prompted the Defense Department to review its detention operations around the world. As a result, 600 criminal investigations and more than 200 criminal prosecutions have occurred, he said.

Another defense official said Army officials had reviewed the photographs posted on the Sydney Morning Herald's Web site and matched them to images that were among those turned over to military authorities in 2004 by a U.S. soldier.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to address the matter publicly, said the photos contained no new information about abuse.

Later, Col. Joseph Curtin, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon, said, "We can confirm that 13 of the 14 images released by the Australian television outlet are authentic."

SBS said the images it showed were among photographs the American Civil Liberties Union was trying to obtain from the U.S. government under a Freedom of Information Act request. A U.S. district court in September upheld the request in a ruling covering scores of photographs and several videotapes. Lawyers said the government was considering an appeal and the images were not released immediately.

At a Senate Armed Services Committee inquiry in May 2004, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld testified that not all known photographs of the abuses at Abu Ghraib had been released publicly.

"Beyond abuse of prisoners, there are other photos that depict incidents of physical violence toward prisoners, acts that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhuman," he said at the time.

Rumsfeld, who was scheduled to hold a routine Pentagon news conference Wednesday afternoon, canceled his appearance for what his aides called scheduling reasons.

Iraqi officials condemned the image, which aired just days after the release of video allegedly showing British soldiers beating and kicking Iraqi males in the southern city of Amarah in 2003.

In Iraq, anger grew as more television stations broadcast the Abu Ghraib images.

"It makes you feel humiliated as an Iraqi," said Mehdi Jumbas, a technician in Baghdad. "The government should act, not let this pass. They should do something about these jails. ... Last time what happened? Nothing."

Several photos appear to show former Spc. Charles Graner Jr., who is serving a 10-year prison term for his role in the scandal. The SBS broadcast said many of the new photos showed Graner having sex with Lynndie England, a 23-year-old reservist from Fort Ashby, W.Va., who is serving a three-year prison term for abusing detainees. England said Graner fathered her young son.

Those photos were not shown.

U.S. finds evidence

of Iraqi death squad

BAGHDAD, Iraq — The U.S. military has stumbled across the first evidence of a death squad within Iraq's Interior Ministry after the detention last month of 22 men wearing police commando uniforms who were about to shoot a Sunni man, an American general overseeing training of Iraqi police told the Chicago Tribune.

The men turned out not to be police commandos but were employed by the Ministry of Interior as highway patrolmen, according to Maj. Gen. Joseph Peterson, who commands the civilian-police training teams in Iraq.

Allegations that death squads targeting Sunnis are operating within the Shiite-dominated police forces have been circulating since May, when the bodies of Sunnis detained by men wearing police uniforms began turning up in dumps around Baghdad. Most had been tortured, and many were shot execution-style.

The killings started after the current Shiite-led government took office and appointed a new interior minister, Bayan Jabr, a leading official in the Iran-backed Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, fueling suspicions the ministry's forces were waging a sectarian campaign against Sunnis.

Thousands of Sunnis have since been rounded up by Interior Ministry forces as part of a crackdown against the Sunni-dominated insurgency, according to ministry figures. Sunni political organizations say 1,600 of those detained by men wearing police uniforms have subsequently turned up dead.

But there has been no solid evidence that those killed were detained by real police, and Iraqi officials have frequently said they suspect insurgents, criminals or militias posing as police have been behind the killings, perhaps to fuel the sectarian tensions that have destabilized the country.

The old Republican Guard uniforms resemble those of the new police commandos charged with carrying out counterinsurgency operations, Peterson said, and police uniforms and paraphernalia are readily available in local markets, making it possible for anyone to disguise themselves as police.

Nonetheless, Peterson said, it is likely there are other death squads operating within the security forces.

In recent weeks there has been another spike in the killings, with the discovery in Baghdad of the corpses of more than two dozen Sunni men, including 14 found in the back of a truck, blindfolded and shot after they had been seized from a mosque by men wearing police uniforms.

The discovery of the death squad came about almost by chance, when an Iraqi army checkpoint in northern Baghdad stopped the men in late January. They told the soldiers that they were taking the Sunni man away to be shot dead.

"The amazing thing is ... they tell you exactly what they're going to do," Peterson said.

Four of the men, believed to be the ringleaders of the group, are being held at the U.S. detention facility at Abu Ghraib, he said, and the 18 others, who were likely just following orders, are in an Iraqi jail. The Sunni man, who is accused of murder, is also in Iraqi custody.

Investigations suggest the four owed their allegiance to the Badr Organization, the armed wing of the Supreme Council, Peterson said.

Also

Violence continues: Four children were killed when a bomb exploded outside the Karama primary school in the Saydiyah neighborhood of southeastern Baghdad, Iraqi police said. Nearly 20 people were killed in car bombings and shootings elsewhere.

Six police officers and a civilian were killed in separate attacks in Baghdad, and police found the bodies of four Iraqis who had been handcuffed and shot in the head.

U.S. troops also killed five insurgents in three separate gunbattles on Tuesday and Wednesday, U.S. military authorities said.

Compiled from Knight Ridder Newspapers, The Associated Press, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and Reuters reports.