"US judge orders release of detainee abuse photos" by Jennifer Peltz, Associated Press March 22, 2015
NEW YORK — The government must release photographs showing the abuse of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, a federal judge has ruled in the long-running clash over letting the world see potentially disturbing images of how the military treated prisoners.
Friday’s ruling by US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein gives the government, which has fought the case for more than a decade, two months to decide whether to appeal before the photos could be released.
Hellerstein! The 9/11 cover-up judge now soiling -- and deservedly so -- the AmeriKan government's image! Must not like Obummer standing up to Israel!
The American Civil Liberties Union has been seeking to make them public so the government can be held accountable.
‘‘To allow the government to suppress any image that might provoke someone, somewhere, to violence would be to give the government sweeping power to suppress evidence of its own agents’ misconduct,’’ said Jameel Jaffer, ACLU deputy legal director. ‘‘Giving the government that kind of censorial power would have implications far beyond this specific context.’’
The Defense Department is studying the ruling and will make any further responses in court, Lieutenant Colonel Myles Caggins III, a spokesman, said.
The fight over the photographs reaches back to the early years of the wars, and it invokes the images of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq that sparked international outrage after they emerged in 2004 and 2006. Early in the 2004 lawsuit, the ACLU pointed to the Abu Ghraib photos as priority examples of records the organization was seeking on the treatment of detainees.
They sparked shame here.
It’s unclear how many more photographs exist.
Did the CIA destroy them like they did the videotapes?
The government has said it has 29 relevant pictures from at least seven different sites in Afghanistan and Iraq, and it’s believed to have perhaps hundreds or thousands more, Hellerstein said in a ruling in August. He said some photos he had seen ‘‘are relatively innocuous, while others need more serious consideration,’’ and he has ruled that any images that would be released would be redacted to protect the identities of the people in them.
Some photographs, taken by service members in Iraq and Afghanistan, were part of criminal investigations of alleged abuse. Some images show ‘‘soldiers pointing pistols or rifles at the heads of hooded and handcuffed detainees,’’ then-Solicitor General — now Supreme Court Justice — Elena Kagan wrote in an appeal to the high court earlier in the case, which has taken a long road through the courts and Congress.
The government has long argued that releasing the photos could incite attacks against US forces and government personnel abroad.
Why? Those folks already know what happened. This is about keeping such things from the home audience, the American people, lest they see how evil their government truly is.
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Maybe you would like to scroll cell-to-cell to see what else is in there.
