NEW YORK: A federal judge has ordered the US Army to release more than 100 photographs and several videos taken by an American soldier relating to detainee abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, according to court documents.
Judge Alvin Hellerstein of the US District Court in Manhattan late on Wednesday ordered the Defense Department to process 144 photographs by June 30.
The photographs and videos, to be edited so the faces of soldiers are not shown, were provided by Sgt. Joseph Darby, whose photos set off the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal more than a year ago.
Hellerstein gave the government 10 days to estimate how long it would take to edit four videos, also to be handed over.
The order came in response to a Freedom of Information Act suit filed in 2003 by civil rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, regarding treatment of US-held detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.
ACLU attorney Amrit Singh said, “These documents reveal that the torture of detainees in U.S. custody was widespread and systemic. They underscore the need for an independent investigation into which government officials were ultimately responsible for the abuse.”
She said many documents were still being withheld. “This is just a fraction of what remains to be litigated in this case,” she said.
More than 36,000 documents have been released so far to the ACLU, who has filed suit against several government departments, including the CIA, FBI and Department of Justice.
Meanwhile, UN satellite imagery experts have found out that equipment and material that could be used to make biological or chemical weapons and banned long-range missiles has been removed from 109 sites in Iraq, UN weapons inspectors said in a report obtained on Thursday.
UN inspectors have been blocked from returning to Iraq since the US-led war in 2003 so they have been using satellite photos to see what happened to the sites that were subject to UN monitoring because their equipment had both civilian and military uses.
In the report to the Security Council, acting chief weapons inspector Demetrius Perricos said imagery analysts have identified 109 sites that have been emptied of equipment to varying degrees, up from 90 reported in March.
The report also provided much more detail about the amount and types of equipment at the sites, and the percentage of items that are no longer at the places where UN inspectors monitored them. From the imagery analysis, Perricos said analysts at the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission which he heads have concluded that biological sites were less damaged than chemical and missile sites.
He said the so-called dual use equipment and material missing from the sites can be used for legitimate purposes.
“However, they can also be utilised for prohibited purposes if in a good state of repair and integrated in a production line in a suitable environment,” he said.
Perricos also stressed that no conclusions can be made about “the destination of all items removed.”
Equipment and material could have been moved elsewhere in Iraq, sold as scrap, melted down or purchased by someone else. He said inspectors also couldn’t make any determination about what may be inside buildings where roofs are intact and satellite imagery can’t penetrate. Perricos said analysts found, for example, that 53 of the 98 vessels that could be used for a wide range of chemical reactions had disappeared. “Due to its characteristics, this equipment can be used for the production of both commercial chemicals and chemical warfare agents and their precursors,” he said.
Reflecting the scale of the missing items, the report said 628 corrosion-resistant metal sheets, 3,380 valves, 107 pumps, and over 13km of pipes were known to have been located at the 39 chemical sites.
The largest percentages of missing items were at the 58 missile facilities, which include some of the key production sites for both solid and liquid propellant missiles, the report said.
For example, 289 of the 340 pieces of equipment to produce missiles – about 85 per cent – had been removed, it said.
As violence continues in Iraq, a suicide bomber blew himself up at a gathering of Sufis north of Baghdad, killing 10 people in the latest attack by Iraqi insurgents on religious sects they disapprove of, officials said yesterday.
The bomber detonated his explosives on Thursday evening in a house near the town of Balad as Sufis gathered for a religious ceremony, Interior Ministry officials said.
In Kirkuk, where ethnic tensions have been building between Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen who all lay claim to the strategic oil city, gunmen killed a leading Turkmen official in a drive-by shooting as he left Friday prayers, police said.
The victim, Brigadier General Sabah Qaratun, worked for Kirkuk’s local government and was a member of a leading Turkmen party. Over the past month leading officials in all three ethnic communities have been assassinated in the city.    – Agenceis




photo: A man cries at the site of a suicide car bombing in Yethrib village near Balad where his brother was killed with nine other “Sufis”             – ap

Last update on: 4-6-2005