Judge orders US to release detainee abuse photos

A federal judge has ordered the US government to release photographs showing US military abuse of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The ruling Friday by US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein in New York gives the government 60 days to decide whether to release the disturbing photos or appeal an order to do so.

The Pentagon is studying the ruling and will announce its response in court, spokesman Lt. Col. Myles Caggins III said.

The US government has been fighting the case since 2004 when the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued for the photos’ release under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

A handful of disturbing images showing abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq
surfaced that year, drawing international condemnation to the way US military personnel treated detainees.

This photo, taken in 2003 at Abu Ghraib prison, shows a US soldier throwing a punch at a detainee.
 

This file photo shows a US soldier threatening a detainee at the Abu Ghraib prison with a dog.
 

A detainee in an outdoor solitary confinement cell talks with a US military policeman at Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad. 
 

The Obama administration, which has supported a controversial Senate report on CIA torture, argues that making the abuse photos public would incite attacks against US soldiers still in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Hellerstein first ordered the US government in 2005 to release the photographs, but they remained classified as Congress continued to raise concern over their national security implications.

In 2009, Congress passed a law allowing the government to keep the photographs secret if the secretary of defense determined that releasing them would endanger American lives.

The ACLU however has argued that the photos "are manifestly important to an ongoing national debate about governmental accountability for the abuse of prisoners."

Hellerstein said the US government has not been specific enough in its arguments.

The government should "disclose each and all the photographs unless it moves promptly to cure its failure to submit an individualized certification," the judge ruled on Friday.

Source:Press tv