Damning new photographs and videos purporting to show the abuse and even murder of Iraqi prisoners at the infamous Abu Ghraib jail have been broadcast on Australian television and picked up by Arab channels.
The images are likely to trigger outrage because they show more graphically than before the scenes of humiliation which took place at Abu Ghraib in late 2003.
The new pictures, broadcast at a time when anti-Western feeling is running high among Muslims across the world over the publication of the cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohamed, may finally torpedo the reputation of the US occupation in the eyes of Iraqis. The pictures were among dozens at the centre of a legal battle in the US to block their publication. They are among more than 100 stills and four videos taken at the Baghdad prison which the US administration is fighting to keep secret in a court case with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
The pictures show guards smiling as they stand beside blood-soaked and hooded prisoners, some of whom are tied to an unidentified apparatus. The release of further pictures of torture will make it more difficult for the US to claim that what happened in Abu Ghraib in 2003 and 2004 was isolated and the work of low-level guards acting on their own initiative. Mr Singh said the images were evidence of "systematic and widespread abuse" of prisoners by US soldiers.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article345692.ece
