Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Something to Follow ;)

WASHINGTON -- Defense Department officials will release photographs depicting alleged prisoner abuses at U.S. facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, amid a political firestorm over controversial interrogation methods.
The photos, first ordered released by a federal judge in June 2006, will be made public no later than May 28, a Justice Department lawyer said in a letter to the judge Thursday. They include "a substantial number" of images not previously identified as part of the case, the government said.
The letter to U.S. District Court Judge Alvin Hellerstein in New York is part of an Obama administration effort to end losing legal battles that the Bush administration had waged to keep the images under wraps.
The American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy groups filed the original case in 2003, seeking the release of photographs depicting alleged prisoner abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan.
They include 21 pictures taken "in at least seven different locations in Afghanistan and Iraq," according to court records. The pictures were taken at facilities other than Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, where photos of naked detainees touched off fierce criticism of the U.S. in 2004. An appeals-court panel has said the 21 images depict detainees who "were clothed and generally not forced to pose."
Defense officials will release 23 more pictures they say depict alleged abuse, in addition to an unspecified number culled from the case files that have now been closed by U.S. Army criminal investigators, the government said.
The photos will emerge from the same litigation that led to last week's release of a series of memos from the Bush administration authorizing harsh interrogation techniques.
Write to Cam Simpson at cam.simpson@wsj.com

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