One of Ours

Prisoners posed in three of the most infamous photographs of abuse to come out of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were not being softened up for interrogation by intelligence officers but instead were being punished for criminal acts or the amusement of their jailers...

...documents show that MPs staged the photographs to discipline the prisoners for acts ranging from rioting to an alleged rape of a teenage boy in the prison.

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...when Darby returned to Abu Ghraib from leave in November and heard about a shooting at the prison's "hard site," which contains Tier 1A, he told military investigators. He said that he asked the MP in charge of the tier's night shift, Spec. Charles A. Graner Jr., if he had any photographs of the cell where the shooting took place.

Darby said Graner handed him two CDs of photographs. "I thought the discs just had pictures of Iraq, the cell where the shooting occurred," Darby told investigators. Instead, Darby said, he viewed hundreds of photographs showing naked detainees being abused by U.S. soldiers. "It was just wrong," Darby said. "I knew I had to do something."

He said that he asked Graner, a Pennsylvania prison guard in civilian life, about the photographs. Graner replied: "The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the corrections officer in me says, 'I love to make a grown man piss himself.'"

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...MPs or their attorneys have said that Graner served as the liaison on the cellblock between the MPs and the intelligence officers, who had taken control of Tier 1A by the fall of 2003.

Davis said Graner told him, "the agents and MI soldiers would ask him to do things, but nothing was ever in writing, he would complain."

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"Why did you not inform your chain of command about this abuse?"

"Because I assumed that if they were doing anything out of the ordinary or outside the guidelines, someone would have said something," Davis said. "Also, the wing belongs to MI and it appeared MI personnel approved of the abuse."

[...]

Davis said the intelligence officers told Graner and Frederick: "Loosen this guy up for us. Make sure he has a bad night. Make sure he gets the treatment." "What is the name of the MI staff member who made the previously stated comments?" investigators asked. "I don't know the name because they often don't wear uniforms, and if they do they don't have name tapes," Davis said.

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...they [also] said detainees were beaten and sexually humiliated as punishment or for fun.

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...a detainee jokingly referred to as "Gilligan" by the MPs was forced to stand on a box of food, with wires connected to his figures, toes and penis. Harman said she attached the wires to "Gilligan" and told him he would be electrocuted if he fell off the box. "Why did you do this to the detainee 'Gilligan'?" a military investigator asked. "Just playing with him," Harman said...