Abu Ghraib Prison

Graphic photographs of Iraqi prisoners abused and tortured by US soldiers in Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib Prison in 2003 were first published to global outrage in 2004. Mark Danner’s book Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror appeared in the following November containing government documents, many of them secret, confirming that these were not isolated incidents but a system of deliberate decision-making and failures of command. Abu Ghraib contributed shocking evidence in criticism of US systems of interrogation, including water boarding, and the Government’s covert system of “extraordinary rendition” and institutionalised systems of secrecy.