Reporters Committee urges court to order Abu Ghraib photo release
A coalition of 14 media organizations and public interest groups organized by The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press have filed a friend-of-the-court brief in U.S. District Court in New York urging the release of Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse photos.
The coalition, which includes CBS Broadcasting Inc., NBC Universal Inc., and The New York Times Co. , supports a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union has had pending the Defense Department since October 2003.
The government argues that the information is protected by Exemption 7(F) of the FOI Act, which protects law enforcement records from disclosure when they "could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of any individual." Citing recent riots in Afghanistan following Newsweek's publication of an article about alleged Koran abuse at Guantanamo Bay, later retracted, the government says the official release of Abu Ghraib prison abuse photos could similarly incite violence against military personnel and civilians overseas.
"The government has taken the position in this case that the more outrageously the behavior exhibited by American troops, the less the public has a right to know about it," said Reporters Committee Executive Director Lucy Dalglish. "Such a stance turns the Freedom of Information Act inside out." Read more
db: What are we talking about here? Editor and Publisher reports:
...'The American public needs to understand we're talking about rape and murder here. We're not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience,' Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told reporters after Rumsfeld testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee. 'We're talking about rape and murder - and some very serious charges.'
A report by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba on the abuse at the prison outside Baghdad says videotapes and photographs show naked detainees, and that groups of men were forced to masturbate while being photographed and videotaped. Taguba also found evidence of a 'male MP guard having sex with a female detainee.'
..The military later screened some of the images for lawmakers, who said they showed, among other things, attack dogs snarling at cowed prisoners, Iraqi women forced to expose their breasts, and naked prisoners forced to have sex with each other.
In the same period, reporter Seymour Hersh, who helped uncover the scandal, said in a speech before an ACLU convention: "Some of the worse that happened that you don't know about, ok? Videos, there are women there. Some of you may have read they were passing letters, communications out to their men.....The women were passing messages saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened.'
"Basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys/children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. The worst about all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror it's going to come out." Read more
The coalition, which includes CBS Broadcasting Inc., NBC Universal Inc., and The New York Times Co. , supports a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union has had pending the Defense Department since October 2003.
The government argues that the information is protected by Exemption 7(F) of the FOI Act, which protects law enforcement records from disclosure when they "could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of any individual." Citing recent riots in Afghanistan following Newsweek's publication of an article about alleged Koran abuse at Guantanamo Bay, later retracted, the government says the official release of Abu Ghraib prison abuse photos could similarly incite violence against military personnel and civilians overseas.
"The government has taken the position in this case that the more outrageously the behavior exhibited by American troops, the less the public has a right to know about it," said Reporters Committee Executive Director Lucy Dalglish. "Such a stance turns the Freedom of Information Act inside out." Read more
db: What are we talking about here? Editor and Publisher reports:
...'The American public needs to understand we're talking about rape and murder here. We're not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience,' Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told reporters after Rumsfeld testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee. 'We're talking about rape and murder - and some very serious charges.'
A report by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba on the abuse at the prison outside Baghdad says videotapes and photographs show naked detainees, and that groups of men were forced to masturbate while being photographed and videotaped. Taguba also found evidence of a 'male MP guard having sex with a female detainee.'
..The military later screened some of the images for lawmakers, who said they showed, among other things, attack dogs snarling at cowed prisoners, Iraqi women forced to expose their breasts, and naked prisoners forced to have sex with each other.
In the same period, reporter Seymour Hersh, who helped uncover the scandal, said in a speech before an ACLU convention: "Some of the worse that happened that you don't know about, ok? Videos, there are women there. Some of you may have read they were passing letters, communications out to their men.....The women were passing messages saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened.'
"Basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys/children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. The worst about all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror it's going to come out." Read more
posted by exoplanet at 12:26 AM
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