A civil liberties group on Tuesday demanded the release of more pictures of U.S. soldiers and detainees after the government acknowledged it had only one new Abu Ghraib prison picture because the rest were already public.
Hours after the acknowledgement by the Department of Defense, the American Civil Liberties Union said the government must now turn over 29 more photographs and two videotapes related to the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody.
ACLU lawyer Amrit Singh said the organization learned of the images, apparently not taken at Abu Ghraib, when the Army turned over documents late last year in response to an ACLU lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
``It became apparent to us there were no grounds for holding additional abuse pictures,'' she said, noting that the judge presiding over the case had issued a strongly worded opinion saying the public had a right to detainee abuse images.
The new legal fight was disclosed as the ACLU celebrated its success in forcing the government to acknowledge it knew about the Abu Ghraib pictures already published on various Web sites months before the scandal erupted in spring 2004.
The digital photos of physical abuse and sexual humiliation of inmates at the Iraqi prison generated international outrage and called into question the Bush administration's moral standing in its campaign to spread democracy to Iraq. One photo showed a naked hooded prisoner on a box with wires fastened to his hands and genitals.
The government told the ACLU on Monday night that the photographs published online and offered in prosecutions of some soldiers were authentic and turned over one other picture, of two detainees standing side by side in orange jumpsuits with their faces blacked out.
U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein had ordered the release of the pictures, and the government dropped its appeal after it became apparent that nearly all the pictures were already public.
ACLU lawyers have said the continuous challenges to the release of the pictures likely led to their being leaked publicly.
Singh said the public will have a chance to decide for itself about the conduct of its government.
``It's a victory for the principle that the public has a right to know about the kind of misconduct its government has been engaged in,'' she said.
Megan Gaffney, a spokeswoman for government lawyers in New York, declined to comment Tuesday.
The judge earlier this year had ordered the pictures released, saying that terrorists ``do not need pretexts for their barbarism'' and that suppressing the pictures would amount to submitting to blackmail.
``Our nation does not surrender to blackmail, and fear of blackmail is not a legally sufficient argument to prevent us from performing a statutory command,'' the judge said. ``Indeed, the freedoms that we champion are as important to our success in Iraq and Afghanistan as the guns and missiles with which our troops are armed.''
Dozens of the photographs were taken by a soldier. A military policeman who saw the photos turned them over to the Army.
Abu Ghraib prison, built by Saddam Hussein's regime in the 1970s outside Baghdad, was used as a major detention center by U.S. authorities after the dictator was toppled in 2003. It gained international notoriety after U.S. military personnel were charged with humiliating and assaulting detainees.
Photo: An Image from SBS Australian TV, allegedly showing Iraqi prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib jail during 2003 (AP)
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