The U.S. Defense Department agreed to release 74 photos and three videos showing U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib jail, Reuters reported.
The Defense Department had appealed an order by U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein who ruled that the U.S. government must release the Abu Ghraib abuse pictures.
The Pentagon had been resisting the publication of the images, arguing that they could incite more violence against American soldiers in Iraq. But it later promised to release the pictures within seven days of the court’s order.
"This stipulation only applies to the 74 photos and three videos that were part of the litigation. We reserve the right to repeat arguments and to appeal future orders to release other images,” a U.S. defense official said on condition of anonymity.
Judge Alvin Hellerstein, who ordered the release of the images earlier this year, said terrorists "do not need pretexts for their barbarism" and that suppressing the photos 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," he 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."
The American Civil Liberties Union said the government agreed to release the pictures after the Web site Salon.com and the Australian program “Dateline” posted some photographs and videos showing prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib.
"The withdrawal of the government's appeal only confirms there was no legal basis for withholding these images from the public in the first case," ACLU attorney Amrit Singh said.
"This is a significant victory for the public's right to know the whole truth about the widespread abuse of detainees in U.S. custody abroad."
Anthony D. Romero, ACLU executive director, also said the civil rights group "will press on with its lawsuit to hold high-level officials accountable for creating policies that resulted in the abuse of detainees."
The Pentagon launched several investigations into the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal. Only nine low-ranking soldiers have been convicted, some are serving jail sentences. All top American commanders have so far been cleared of any crime.
The release of the pictures is part of a Freedom of Information Act suit filed in 2003 by civil rights groups, including the ACLU, over treatment of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.
So far, 90,000 pages of documents have been released to the civil rights groups, which have filed suit against several U.S. government departments and agencies, including the CIA, FBI and Department of Justice.
The Court of Appeals is expected to hear arguments on another part of the case -- the CIA's refusal to confirm or deny two documents, including a presidential executive order, relating to interrogation tactics.
Washington has been facing mounting international criticism over the number of suspects it holds and the conditions at its prisons in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere in the world. The U.S., moreover, came under increasing scrutiny after media reports revealed it was holding an unknown number of suspects in secret locations overseas, refusing either to acknowledge the detentions or to give information on the fate or the whereabouts of those detainees.
Agencies
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