US soldiers alleged rape, sexual abuse in Iraq

This Post contains Sexual Contents Viewers Discretion is Advised could not independently confirm the authenticity of the images.

Photos obtained by Press TV reveal alleged sexual harassment and rape of Iraqi prisoners at US-run Abu Ghraib detention center by American soldiers.

The alleged pictures illustrate American soldiers raping and sexually harassing Iraqi detainees.

Wayne Madsen, an investigative journalist from Washington, told Press TV that there was a lot to explain with respect to the photos.

“That is exactly what was taking place in Abu Ghraib and that information came to me from many many different sources some of whom actually stationed in Abu Ghraib at the time,” Madsen said.

The allegations that these photos are fake were made by neoconservative media, He added.

To clarify the issue, Madsen said when some of the disputed photos were randomly published by the Boston Globe in 2004; the paper came under attack as part of neoconservative propaganda.

He also ruled out the reports claiming that the photos were taken from pornographic movies.This is while the Pentagon has rejected that the photographs even existed.

On Thursday, Antonio Taguba, a retired US general who conducted an inquiry into the abuses at the US-run prison in Iraq, sent shockwaves around the world by explaining about the heinous pictures in an interview with The Daily Telegraph.

“These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency,” the British newspaper quoted Taguba as saying without releasing any of the images.

The daily added that one of the pictures depicted a male American soldier apparently raping a female detainee, while another showed a male translator raping a male prisoner. Another photo showed how a female detainee was forced to disrobe and expose her breasts.

There were also photos showing US soldiers sexually assaulting the prisoners with objects like truncheons, wires and phosphorescent tubes.

US President Barack Obama had promised to release some 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan; however, later on he backtracked on his pledge and blocked the release of the photographs.

Taguba said that the gruesome nature of the photos was to such extent that he could understand why Obama is reluctant to authorize their release.

Brigadier General Janis Karpinski said to the Washington Post that Military Intelligence, rather than the Military Police, dictated the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. "The prison, and that particular cellblock where the events took place, were under the control of the Military Intelligence command," Brigadier General Karpinski said to the Washington Post Saturday night in a telephone interview from her home in Hilton Head, South Carolina.

Brigadier General Karpinski, who commanded the 800th Military Police Brigade, described a high-pressure Military Intelligence and CIA command that prized successful interrogations. A month before the alleged abuses and rapes occurred, she said, a team of CIA, Military Intelligence officers and private consultants under the employ of the US government came to Abu Ghraib. "Their main and specific mission was to give the interrogators new techniques to get more information from detainees," she said.

Today, new photographs were sent to La Voz de Aztlan from confidential sources depicting the shocking rapes of two Iraqi women by what are purported to be US Military Intelligence personnel and private US mercenaries in military fatigues. It is now known that hundreds of these photographs had been in circulation among the troops in Iraq. The graphic photos were being swapped between the soldiers like baseball cards.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, one Mexican-American soldier told La Voz de Aztlan, "Maybe the officers didn't know what was going on, but everybody else did. I have seen literally hundreds of these types of pictures." Many of the pictures was destroyed last September when the luggage of soldiers was searched as they left Iraq, he said An investigation, led by Army Major General Antonio M. Taguba, identified two military intelligence officers and two civilian contractors for the Army as key figures in the abuse cases at the Abu Ghraib prison. In an internal report on his findings, Major General Taguba said he suspected that the four were "either directly or indirectly responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib and strongly recommended disciplinary action."

The Taguba report states that "military intelligence interrogators and other U.S. Government Agency interrogators actively requested that Military Police guards set physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation of witnesses." The report noted that one civilian interrogator, a contractor from a company called CACI International and attached to the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, "clearly knew his instructions" to the Military Police equated to physical and sexual abuse. It is not known whether these instructions included, or led to, the raping of Iraqi women detainees as well.