AMG– Award winning documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy explores the human and political consequences of one of the most bitter scandals of the war in Iraq in this feature. In the 1960’s, a prison was built in Abu Ghraib, an Iraqi city west of Baghdad, and during the regime of Saddam Hussein it became a center of torture and abuse where political dissidents were subjected to agonizing punishment or death.
Following the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003, the prison was taken over by American military authorities, and was used as a holding facility for prisoners of war and suspected terrorists captured by U.S. forces. The prison’s reputation as a site of widespread abuse rose again when journalists discovered photographs of Iraqi prisoners being tortured and humiliated in an ugly variety of ways by American soldiers, a scandal which had a major impact on international thinking about the war. Ghosts of Abu Ghraib offers an in-depth look at the story behind the abuse of Iraqi prisoners, featuring interviews with observers on both sides of the national divide.
HBO Film, Ghosts of Abu Ghraib
© 2007 HBO
There can be no doubt that abuses were peretprated. The actions may have been uncivilised but at least in western civilisations perpertrators of such abuses are rightly subjected to the justice system. In dictatorships such as Iraq was, the perpertrators would’ve got away with it. You must bear in mind the Guardian is left wing paper that sees conspiracies and injustice in everything. And I’m speaking as an English ex-Guardian reader who got fed up with it’s constant whinging tone.