The trials laid bare the crimes and the messy, intertwined lives of the soldiers. She's now living with her parents and taking care of her child, the son of Graner. While Graner was in prison, he married Megan Ambuhl, another one of the convicted soldiers. After the scandal broke, the US lost the moral high ground, according to many of those who fought in the war. Insurgents who attacked US forces after , according to a retired general, Stanley McChrystal, said they were enraged by the Abu Ghraib photos.
The prison was handed over to Iraqi authorities in , and eight years later the place was closed down. Several dozen former prisoners sued a private contractor, a company that employed Arabic-language interpreters, for their role in the abuse. One of their lawyers, Shereef Akeel, says the settlement provided "a huge sense of justice".
He could not find a job as a mechanic so he began to counsel people who were addicted to drugs and alcohol. He spoke to them about mistakes that he'd made during the war, ones he deeply regretted. That was me. That isn't who I am today. I'm a different person. Yet his efforts to help people in Pennsylvania and atone for his past offer little solace to those who were subjected to the abuse at the prison.
Many of them say they're still feeling the effects of their injuries. Ali al-Qaisi, who became known as the "hooded man" the name refers to the image of a hooded prisoner standing on a box , said in a video posted on Twitter : "It crushed our psyches. Sivits is right that the country did change after Abu Ghraib. Torture was banned in , shortly after President Barack Obama took office. Military interrogations were restricted and "black site" prisons, CIA-run facilities where detainees were subjected to harsh interrogations, shut down.
A new legal framework was created so that perpetrators, whether they worked for the government or a military contractor, could be more easily held accountable. Yet human-rights advocates say that despite the changes in law and government policy, people are now more accepting of the idea of torture than they were in the past.
The Abu Ghraib photos were shocking but over time outrage faded. Despite widespread rejection of those images, a "disturbing number" of voters later said yes when asked if torture was ever justified, says Katherine Hawkins, an investigator who works for the Project on Government Oversight. One recent poll suggests two-thirds of Americans think torture can be justified. She and others believe that Abu Ghraib is more than a dark chapter in the nation's past.
During the campaign, Donald Trump said that if he were elected president he would bring back waterboarding, an interrogation technique that's banned by federal law, as well as methods that were "a hell of a lot worse" than waterboarding. He shifted his position after the election, saying he would defer to Defence Secretary James Mattis, who has said torture was a bad idea. But the new national security adviser, John Bolton, has previously said that Americans should have the full range of interrogation methods available to them - and that he's open to the possibility of waterboarding in order to get information from someone.
Trump's nominee for CIA director, Gina Haspel, once oversaw a black site, and human-rights activists say she is not suitable for the role of director because of her role in the harsh interrogation programme under the Bush administration.
She said during her confirmation process she would not re-start the harsh interrogation programme and conceded it was wrong. But it will likely not stop her being confirmed later this month.
Nearly a decade and a half after the scandal, Mora says he's not sure people in the US have learned lessons in humility, the kind that Sivits describes. Mora reminds me that the president and many political leaders say that they support the use of torture. The laws against torture remain in place. But Mora says he worries that if Americans engage in another full-scale war like the one in Iraq, they'll resort to torture again.
Image source, Nubar Alexanian. But its horrendous legacy lives on. This case brings us one step closer to the possibility of closing the chapter on abuses at Abu Ghraib — but this relies on the full execution of justice that is not limited simply to prosecuting perpetrators of torture, but which extends to survivors of torture such that they are able to finally, albeit incompletely, move on with their lives.
But perhaps this is what American justice is really all about. Four Iraqis who allege they suffered torture by a US military contractor are battling for retribution in a civil court. Maha Hilal. Published On 1 Oct The focus of her research and expertise is institutionalised Islamophobia in the war on terror and its impact on Muslims and Muslim Americans. More from Author. Most Read. Poland-Belarus border: What you need to know about the crisis.
They answer every question. Nakhla, a translator who was an employee of Titan, a civilian contractor. General Taguba saved his harshest words for the military-intelligence officers and private contractors.
He recommended that Colonel Thomas Pappas, the commander of one of the M. The problems inside the Army prison system in Iraq were not hidden from senior commanders.
Some of the incidents had led to the killing or wounding of inmates and M. Karpinski invariably approved the reports and signed orders calling for changes in day-to-day procedures. But Taguba found that she did not follow up, doing nothing to insure that the orders were carried out. General Taguba further found that Abu Ghraib was filled beyond capacity, and that the M.
There were gross differences, Taguba said, between the actual number of prisoners on hand and the number officially recorded. A lack of proper screening also meant that many innocent Iraqis were wrongly being detained—indefinitely, it seemed, in some cases.
The Taguba study noted that more than sixty per cent of the civilian inmates at Abu Ghraib were deemed not to be a threat to society, which should have enabled them to be released. Karpinski was rarely seen at the prisons she was supposed to be running, Taguba wrote. Taguba recommended that Karpinski and seven brigade military-police officers and enlisted men be relieved of command and formally reprimanded.
No criminal proceedings were suggested for Karpinski; apparently, the loss of promotion and the indignity of a public rebuke were seen as enough punishment. General Sanchez also authorized an investigation into possible wrongdoing by military and civilian interrogators.
As the international furor grew, senior military officers, and President Bush, insisted that the actions of a few did not reflect the conduct of the military as a whole. The picture he draws of Abu Ghraib is one in which Army regulations and the Geneva conventions were routinely violated, and in which much of the day-to-day management of the prisoners was abdicated to Army military-intelligence units and civilian contract employees.
Interrogating prisoners and getting intelligence, including by intimidation and torture, was the priority. The mistreatment at Abu Ghraib may have done little to further American intelligence, however. Willie J. Rowell, who served for thirty-six years as a C. Prisoners have the right to appeal any internment decision and have their cases reviewed.
Human Rights Watch complained to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that civilians in Iraq remained in custody month after month with no charges brought against them.
Not a chance. Letters, e-mails, journal entries, and essays from Americans serving in Iraq. By Various Authors. By Steve Coll. By Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris. How Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal, became one of its casualties. By Seymour M.
When he returned later, Wisdom testified: I saw two naked detainees, one masturbating to another kneeling with its mouth open. Seymour M. Hersh wrote his first piece for The New Yorker in and has been a regular contributor to the magazine since Army U. Enter your e-mail address.
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