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FORT MEADE, Md. (Army News Service, March 21, 2006) -- A military police dog handler was found guilty today of charges related to maltreatment of detainees at the Abu Ghraib confinement facility in Iraq. The verdict for Sgt. Michael Smith came after more than a week of court-martial proceedings at Fort Meade. The panel began hearing testimony today regarding sentencing. Smith, a 24-year-old MP then with the 523rd Military Police Battalion, was accused of several violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice stemming from incidents involving his un-muzzled military working dog at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 and early...

As the Iraqi insurgency intensified in early 2004, an elite Special Operations forces unit converted one of Saddam Hussein's former military bases near Baghdad into a top-secret detention center. There, American soldiers made one of the former Iraqi government's torture chambers into their own interrogation cell. They named it the Black Room. In June 2004, Stephen A. Cambone, a top Pentagon official, ordered his deputy, Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, to look into allegations of detainee abuse at Camp Nama. In the windowless, jet-black garage-size room, some soldiers beat prisoners with rifle butts, yelled and spit in their faces and,...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The New York Times said on Saturday it had identified the wrong man as the hooded prisoner standing on a box in a photograph that came to symbolize U.S. military abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. The newspaper's March 11 profile about Ali Shalal Qaissi was challenged by online magazine Salon.com, which said an Army investigation had concluded the prisoner was a different man. "The Times did not adequately research Mr. Qaissi's insistence that he was the man in the photograph," The Times said in an editor's note accompanying a front page story on the misidentification. "A...

On March 11, the New York Times printed the gripping story of Ali Shalal Qaissi, the Iraqi in the most famous photo from Abu Ghraib, depicted below: The story begins: Almost two years later, Ali Shalal Qaissi's wounds are still raw. There is the mangled hand, an old injury that became infected by the shackles chafing his skin. There is the slight limp, made worse by days tied in uncomfortable positions. And most of all, there are the nightmares of his nearly six-month ordeal at Abu Ghraib prison in 2003 and 2004. The story continues in lurid detail, a searing...

NEW YORK (AP) - The New York Times acknowledged in Saturday's editions that it incorrectly identified an Iraqi man in a front-page story as the hooded figure shown in a photograph from Abu Ghraib prison that became an icon of abuse by American captors. After the original story appeared March 11, the online magazine Salon.com challenged the man's identity, based on an examination of 280 Abu Ghraib pictures it had been studying for weeks and an interview with an official from the Army's Criminal Investigation Command. The Times said it was investigating the matter. The Times said Qaissi and his...

In the summer of 2004, a group of former detainees of Abu Ghraib prison filed a lawsuit. One claimed to be the man in the photograph -- wires attached to his outstretched arms. The trouble was, the man in the photograph was not Mr. Qaissi.

The online magazine Salon is challenging the identity of a man profiled by The New York Times in a front-page article on Saturday who says he is the iconic hooded figure in a published photograph who was abused by Americans at Abu Ghraib prison in 2003 and 2004. Salon bases its challenge on an examination of a set of 280 Abu Ghraib photographs it has been studying for several weeks and an interview with an official of the Army's Criminal Investigation Command, known as the C.I.D., who says the man identified by The Times is not the detainee in the...

Tue Mar 14, 9:22 AM ET NEW YORK - The New York Times is investigating questions raised about the identity of a man who said in a Page 1 profile that he is the Abu Ghraib prisoner whose hooded image became an icon of abuse by American captors. The online magazine Salon.com challenged the man's identity, based on an examination of 280 Abu Ghraib pictures it has been studying for weeks and on an interview with an official of the Army's Criminal Investigation Command. The official says the man the Times profiled Saturday, Ali Shalal Qaissi, is not the detainee...

WASHINGTON, March 9, 2006 – The United States always has planned to transfer authority for all detention facilities in Iraq to the Iraqis, but announcements regarding the imminent closure at the Abu Ghraib prison are premature, defense officials said today. News reports that the U.S. military intends to close Abu Ghraib within the next few months and to transfer its prisoners to other jails are inaccurate, officials said. There's no specific timetable for that transfer or for closure of the Baghdad prison, they said. Decisions regarding Abu Ghraib and other detention facilities in Iraq will be based largely on two...

The Baghdad jail where US troops were photographed abusing Iraqis is to close, a military spokesman has said. Abu Ghraib prison will shut in the next three months and some 4,500 inmates are to be transferred to other jails in Iraq. The facility in western Baghdad had been a torture centre under Saddam Hussein. But it gained more recent notoriety after pictures of soldiers abusing inmates, in 2003, were published. Elsewhere, Iraq has hanged 13 insurgents - the first executions of militants in the country since Saddam's downfall. Iraqi authorities reinstated the death penalty in June 2004 so they would...

Troops are urged to avoid theaters with Turkish film Army says “Kurtlar Vadisi Irak” depicts GIs as indiscriminate killers A woman stands next to a billboard featuring the new Turkish movie “Valley of the Wolves Iraq” in Istanbul, Turkey. Tickets for the movie, the latest of a genre of pop culture works feeding off growing anti-American sentiment in Turkey, are selling out across the country. Soldiers in Europe have been advised to avoid movie theaters showing a new Turkish film that depicts U.S. soldiers as indiscriminate killers of Iraqis, according to an Army communication circulated last week. In a...

Milan Babic, the leader of rebel Serbs in Croatia and one-time president of the Croatian Serbs in the 1990s, has committed suicide in his cell at a U.N. detention facility where he was serving a 13-year term for war crimes, officials said. Babic was found dead in his cell at the prison in Scheveningen, a suburb of The Hague, at about 6:30 p.m. on Sunday, according to a statement from the U.N. war crimes tribunal. "The Dutch authorities were called immediately. After conducting an investigation, they confirmed that the cause of death was suicide," the statement said.

Flimflammable Last week we noted CNN's latest excuse for not showing images of the Danish Mohammed cartoons: "CNN is not showing the negative caricatures of the likeness of Prophet Mohammed because the network believes its role is to cover the events surrounding the publication of the cartoons while not unnecessarily adding fuel to the controversy itself." Keep in mind, as Michelle Malkin noted, that one or two of the cartoons are not "negative" in any way -- they are simply tame cartoon portraits (see all the of cartoons here). CNN refused to show even these, despite their specific disclaimer about...

By Michael Perry SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian television station broadcast on Wednesday what it said were previously unpublished images of abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, fuelling more Arab anger against the United States. The Special Broadcasting Service's "Dateline" current affairs programme said the images were recorded at the same time as the now-infamous pictures of U.S. soldiers abusing Abu Ghraib detainees which sparked international outrage in 2004. Some of the newly broadcast pictures suggest further abuse such as killing, torture and sexual humiliation, Dateline said. The grainy, still photographs and video images show prisoners, some bleeding...

If you wondered where those new Abu Ghraib photos came from you can stop wondering. They came from a certain anti-American organization called the ACLU. How did the ACLU obtain them? Through the courts via the FOIA. This is where the ACLU does all its damage: Federal Courts. The SBS program "Dateline" that aired the new photos also had American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Amrit Singh on the same program saying she hoped the images would bring "further pressure to hold high-ranking officials accountable for what we now know to have been systemic and widespread abuse occurring throughout Iraq, Afghanistan...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 15, 2006 – Publicizing more images depicting alleged abuse of detainees at Iraqi's Abu Ghraib prison could bring harm to U.S. servicemembers, a senior Defense Department official said here today. The release of more Abu Ghraib images "could only further inflame and possibly incite unnecessary violence in the world and would endanger our military men and women that are serving in places around the world," DoD spokesman Bryan Whitman told Pentagon reporters. "The abuses at Abu Ghraib have been fully investigated," Whitman said. "As you know, it's been the policy of this department - it has been and...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 15, 2006 – Hundreds of security detainees were released from prison today, and multiple bombs and weapons caches were discovered in Iraq over the last few days, U.S. military officials reported. About 500 security detainees were released from Abu Ghraib prison. Those released were not guilty of serious or violent crimes, such as bombing, torture, kidnapping, or murder, and all have admitted their crimes, renounced violence, and pledged to be good citizens of a democratic Iraq, officials said. In other news from Iraq, a young girl phoned in a tip about a possible roadside bomb to coalition forces...

WASHINGTON, Jan 12 (Reuters) - A U.S. Army general who rhelped set up operations at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq has asserted his right not to incriminate himself in the courts-martial of two soldiers accused of mistreating detainees there, The Washington Post reported on Thursday. The move by Major Gen. Geoffrey Miller is the first time he has indicated he might have information that could implicate him in wrongdoing, the newspaper said, citing military lawyers. Invoking the right does not legally imply guilt it said. It said the action came shortly after the commanding officer at Abu Ghraib, Col. Thomas...

Lynndie England, the soldier convicted of abusing Iraqi detainees, was seriously burned in a prison kitchen accident at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station, her mother said yesterday. England, who was pictured holding a leash to a naked and hooded Iraqi inmate at the Abu Ghraib prison, was sentenced in September to three years for her part in the abuse scandal, which sparked worldwide outrage. She has since been confined at the Naval Consolidated Brig Miramar, which is on the base. The brig is the Department of Defense's only prison designated for women, said Brewster Schenck, a spokesman for the facility....

The Hooded Man from Abu Ghraib: The Rest of the Story by Laura Mansfield Do you remember this image? (See attached PDF file for image) The hooded man is Haj Ali al Qaisi. Haj Ali is known throughout the world because of this photograph showing him with a black hood over his head, standing on a box, with electric cords on his hands. The photo came to represent torture in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq at the hands of the American military. Haj Ali, who now lives in Jordan and heads a group called the "Organization of Victims of US...