World

ACLU Forces Pentagon to Release Abuse Photos

by Barbara McPherson | April 26, 2009 at 10:05 am

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Tha American Civil Liberties Union(ACLU) has won the battle to have access to pictures of prisoner abuse in American controlled prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan. The ACLU has maintained that prisoner abuse was widespread and not isolated like the infamous abuses recorded at Abu Ghraib prison.

The Pentagon has said it will release hundreds of photographs showing alleged abuse by US personnel of "war on terror" detainees, officials have said.

The US department of defence is to release the images, some of which were taken in Iraq and Afghanistan, by May 28 in response to legal action filed by a US civil rights group.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has spent years pursuing the government in the courts to obtain the pictures.

"These photographs provide visual proof that prisoner abuse by US personnel was not aberrational but widespread," said Amrit Singh, an ACLU lawyer.

The memo release was followed by two US senate reports, one of which said that Condoleezza Rice, the former US national security advisor and secretary of state, approved the use of torture methods such as waterboarding as before legal memos backing its use were written.

While US President Obama has stated that those who were only following orders to torture prisoners should not be prosecuted, it looks as if Rice is vulnerable to prosecution.