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U.S. Prison Guards in Iraq Threatened Defense Workers

Little by little, thanks to hard work by the ACLU who continues to fight government secrecy, the shameful details of the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal continue to come out. As a result of Freedom of Information Act requests filed by the organization, new Government memos have turned up.

U.S. special forces accused of abusing prisoners in Iraq threatened Defense Intelligence Agency personnel who saw the mistreatment, according to U.S. government memos released Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The special forces also monitored e-mails sent by defense personnel and ordered them "not to talk to anyone" in the United States about what they saw, said one memo written by the Defense Intelligence Agency chief, who complained to his Pentagon bosses about the harassment. In addition, the special forces confiscated photos of a prisoner who had been punched in the face.

The description of the condition of some of the prisoners is appalling:

Prisoners arriving at a detention center in Baghdad had "burn marks on their backs" as well as bruises and some complained of kidney pain, according to the June 25, 2004 memo. FBI agents also reported seeing detainees at Abu Ghraib subjected to sleep deprivation, humiliation and forced nudity between October and December 2003 - when the most serious abuses allegedly took place in a scandal that's remains under investigation.

The memos show the dissension between the military, FBI and intelligence groups.

"These documents tell a damning story of sanctioned government abuse - a story that the government has tried to hide and may well come back to haunt our own troops captured in Iraq," said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the New York-based ACLU.

The ACLU's press release is here. The documents in the torture FOIA lawsuit are here.

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