Contact Admin. During the war in Iraq that began in March , personnel of the United States Army and the Central Intelligence Agency committed a series of human rights violations against detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The incidents received widespread condemnation both within the United States and abroad, although the soldiers received support from some conservative media within the United States. The administration of George W. Bush asserted that these were isolated incidents, not indicative of general U.
These organizations stated that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were not isolated incidents, but were part of a wider pattern of torture and brutal treatment at American overseas detention centers, including those in Iraq , Afghanistan , and Guantanamo Bay. The United States Department of Defense removed seventeen soldiers and officers from duty, and eleven soldiers were charged with dereliction of duty , maltreatment, aggravated assault and battery.
Between May and March , these soldiers were convicted in courts-martial , sentenced to military prison, and dishonorably discharged from service.
Brigadier General Janis Karpinski , the commanding officer of all detention facilities in Iraq, was reprimanded and demoted to the rank of colonel. Several more military personnel who were accused of perpetrating or authorizing the measures, including many of higher rank, were not prosecuted. Karpinski told a reporter in that military intelligence personnel had told her that 90 percent of the inmates were innocent of the crimes of which they had been accused and had been detained simply by virtue of having been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Documents popularly known as the Torture Memos came to light a few years later. These documents, prepared shortly before the invasion of Iraq by the United States Department of Justice , authorized certain enhanced interrogation techniques , generally held to involve torture of foreign detainees. The memoranda also argued that international humanitarian laws , such as the Geneva Conventions , did not apply to American interrogators overseas.
