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Barack Obama to release up to 2,000 photographs of prisoner abuse
President Barack Obama is to release up to 2,000 photographs of alleged abuse at American prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan in a move which will fuel the uproar over CIA interrogation memos.

By Toby Harnden in Washington
Last Updated: 5:58PM BST 24 Apr 2009

The decision to make public the images sought in a legal action by the American Civil Liberties Union comes amid a political firestorm over alleged torture of detainees under President George W. Bush.

Some of the photographs, which will be released on May 28, are said to show American service personnel intimidating prisoners by pointing weapons at them, according to officials. The photographs relate to more than 400 separate cases involving alleged prisoner abuse between 2001 and 2005.

Descriptions of some of the alleged abuse photographs include:

* A prisoner pushed up against a wall as military guards or interrogators appear to threaten to sexually assault him with a broomstick

* Female soldiers posing with hooded, shackled prisoners who were stripped naked

* Hooded prisoners on transport planes with Playboy magazines opened to pictures of nude women on their laps

The Pentagon fears a backlash in the Middle East similar to the one provoked by pictures from Abu Ghraib prison, near Baghdad, in 2004 which became emblematic of American mistakes in Iraq.
Amrit Singh, an ACLU lawyer, said that "these photographs provide visual proof that prisoner abuse by US personnel was not aberrational but widespread, reaching far beyond the walls of Abu Ghraib".

The Bush administration had resisted releasing the images to the public, contending that the disclosure would fuel anti-American feeling and violate US obligations towards prisoners under the Geneva Conventions. Several people have already been tried at courts martial for using guns to threaten detainees in cases connected to the photographs.

Mr Obama's decision could undercut his struggle to persuade Congress not to institute a "truth commission" to investigate alleged prisoner abuse and force former Bush administration officials to testify and account for their actions and advice.
Momentum for a major public inquiry was dramatically increased when Mr Obama released four memos last week written by three officials from Mr Bush's Justice Department.

Running to 126 pages, they contained the legal rationale for the CIA's methods of extracting information from al-Qaeda suspects used between 2002 and 2005.

The methods, eventually prohibited by the Bush administration, included sleep deprivation for up to 11 days, forced nudity and stress positions as well as "waterboarding", a form of simulated drowning in which "water is continuously applied from a height of 12 to 24 inches" for "20 to 40 seconds".

In the memos, it was revealed that the waterboarding technique had been used 266 times on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah, two senior al-Qaeda prisoners.

Other possible disclosures as a result of the ACLU legal action include transcripts of prisoner interrogations, a secret CIA inspector general's report and materials from a Justice Department investigation into detainee abuse.

The Obama administration, under fierce pressure from the Left and some congressional Democrats, faces a tough decision about whether to release the information in full, redact parts of it or continue the Bush administration's court battle to keep it secret.
Mr Obama's decision to release the four memos came after the most divisive argument yet in his young administration, which passes the landmark of 100 days next Wednesday.

He was opposed by Leon Panetta, his CIA chief, who argued for redactions of key passages, and John Brennan, a former senior CIA official who is now the top counter-terrorism adviser at the White House.

The most enthusiastic support for the release came from Eric Holder, Mr Obama's attorney general and the man who will decide whether former Bush administration officials should face prosecution, and his legal counsel Gregory Craig.

Robert Gates, the Pentagon chief, and Admiral Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence, are said to have supported Mr Obama with some reservations. It subsequently emerged that Adml Blair had briefed his staff that some important information was extracted from prisoners during harsh interrogations.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/5...