New Abu Ghraib images broadcast

[razrif]

An Australian TV channel has broadcast previously unpublished images showing apparent US abuse of prisoners in Iraq's Abu Ghraib jail in 2003.

The images shown on SBS television were from the same source as those that caused an outcry around the world and led to several US troops being jailed.

The new images show "homicide, torture and sexual humiliation", SBS said.

They are part of a court case in the US. A judge has ruled they can be published but the case is continuing.

The broadcast of the images comes at a time of increased tension between Muslim nations and the West over cartoons satirising the Prophet Muhammad.

Convicted

One of the videos broadcast on the SBS programme Dateline on Wednesday appears to show prisoners being forced to masturbate to the camera.

Other video footage appears to show a prisoner hitting his head against a wall.


It is for the public to decide on looking at them what needs to be done
Amrit Singh,
American Civil Liberties Union

Some photos are said to show corpses. There are also images of prisoners with body and head wounds.

Some of the pictures have been posted on the SBS website.

SBS journalist Olivia Rousset told the BBC one of them showed a senior Iraqi officer being treated for a throat wound received after he resisted being transferred within the camp.

Some of the new photos showed soldiers who have already been convicted for their part in the abuse, including Private Lynndie England and Charles Graner, the man prosecutors said was the ringleader in the scandal.

A number are versions of the photographs that caused outrage when they were initially leaked, including the prisoner wearing a hood and hooked to wires.

SBS interviewed US Congress members who were given a private viewing of all the images at the time the original photos were leaked in 2004.

"They were shocked by what these extra images revealed of the full horror of the abuses taking place at Abu Ghraib," the channel said.

The images are part of a group of more than 100 photographs and four videos taken at Abu Ghraib and later handed to the US army's Criminal Investigations Division.

'Public interest'

In September a New York judge ruled that pictures of the alleged abuse should be released under Freedom of Information provisions.

He was responding to a request from the American Civil Liberties Union for access to 87 unseen images.

The judge rejected the government's arguments that publication could fuel anti-US feelings.

American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Amrit Singh told SBS Dateline: "The photographs have to be released so the public have some idea of what happened at Abu Ghraib.

"It is for the public to decide on looking at them what needs to be done."

The channel defended broadcasting the images.

Mike Carey, executive producer of Dateline, told AFP news agency they were shown "because it is an important matter of public interest that the full story of abuse at Abu Ghraib be told".

US President George W Bush has said the Abu Ghraib abuse was a "disgrace".

Nine junior soldiers have been convicted - some are serving jail sentences. All senior US commanders have so far been cleared of any crime.

The US commander in charge of Abu Ghraib at the time, Janis Karpinski, was reduced in rank from general to colonel and found guilty of dereliction of duty.

[brim]

i find some irony in the fcat that this, Abu Ghraib, is news on M.com. Back in our own home we have the same sort of thing going on. Especially in the prison near Ait Melloul. Maybe this is a case of people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones? What do you think?