Abu Ghraib prison was a prison complex in Abu Ghraib, Iraq, located 32 kilometers (20 mi) west of Baghdad. Abu Ghraib prison was opened in the 1950s and served as a maximum-security prison. From the 1970s, the prison was used by Saddam Hussein to hold political prisoners and later the United States to hold Iraqi prisoners. It developed a reputation for torture and extrajudicial killing, and was closed in 2014.
Abu Ghraib is a city in the Baghdad Governorate of Iraq, located just west of Baghdad's city center, or northwest of Baghdad International Airport. It has a population of 189,000 (2003). The old road to Jordan passes through Abu Ghraib. The government of Iraq created the city and Abu Ghraib District in 1944.
During the early stages of the Iraq War, members of the United States Army and the Central Intelligence Agency committed a series of human rights violations and war crimes against detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, including physical abuse, sexual humiliation, physical and psychological torture, and rape, as well the killing of Manadel al-Jamadi and the desecration of his body. The abuses came to public attention with the publication of photographs of the abuse by CBS News in April 2004. The incidents caused shock and outrage, receiving widespread condemnation within the United States and internationally.
About six months after the United States invasion of Iraq of 2003, rumors of Iraq prison abuse scandals started to emerge.
Geoffrey D. Miller is a retired United States Army major general who commanded the US detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Iraq. Detention facilities in Iraq under his command included Abu Ghraib prison, Camp Cropper, and Camp Bucca. He is noted for having trained soldiers in using torture, or "enhanced interrogation techniques" in US euphemism, and for carrying out the "First Special Interrogation Plan," signed by the Secretary of Defense, against a Guantanamo detainee.
Kenneth John Bigley was a British civil engineer who was kidnapped by Islamic extremists in the al-Mansour district of Baghdad, Iraq, on 16 September 2004, along with his colleagues, U.S. citizens Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong. Following the murders of Hensley and Armstrong by beheading over the course of three days, Bigley was killed in the same manner two weeks later, despite the attempted intervention of the Muslim Council of Britain and the indirect intervention of the British government. Videos of the killings were posted on websites and blogs.
Events in the year 2005 in Iraq.
Manadel al-Jamadi was an Iraqi national who was killed in United States custody during a CIA interrogation at Abu Ghraib prison on 4 November 2003. His name became known in 2004 when the Abu Ghraib scandal made headlines; his corpse packed in ice was the background for widely reprinted photographs of grinning U.S. Army specialists Sabrina Harman and Charles Graner each offering a "thumbs-up" gesture. Al-Jamadi had been a suspect in a bomb attack that killed 12 people in a Baghdad Red Cross facility.
Ghost detainee is a term used in the executive branch of the United States government to designate a person held in a detention center, whose identity has been hidden by keeping them unregistered and therefore anonymous. Such uses arose as the Bush administration initiated the War on Terror following the 9/11 attacks of 2001 in the United States. As documented in the 2004 Taguba Report, it was used in the same manner by United States officials and contractors of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2003–2004.
Michael Tucker is an American documentary film director, best known for his recent documentary The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair. He also directed a documentary in Iraq during the 2003 Iraqi War entitled Gunner Palace. He was born in Hawaii.
Valley of the Wolves: Iraq is a 2006 Turkish action film directed by Serdar Akar and starring Necati Şaşmaz, Billy Zane and Ghassan Massoud. The story concerns a Turkish commando team which goes to Iraq to track down the US military commander responsible for the Hood event.
In the runup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, press stories appeared in the United Kingdom and United States of a plastic shredder or wood chipper into which Saddam and Qusay Hussein fed opponents of their Baathist rule. These stories attracted worldwide attention and boosted support for military action, in stories with titles such as "See men shredded, then say you don't back war". A year later, it was determined there was not enough evidence to support the existence of such a machine.
Yunis Khatayer Abbas is an Iraqi journalist who was imprisoned and tortured in 1998 for writings he had made as a journalist under Saddam Hussein. Five years later in 2003, he was detained by United States troops and imprisoned at Abu Ghraib prison for nine months. Although innocent he was suspected of plotting to assassinate then British prime minister Tony Blair along with his two brothers. During his time at Abu Ghraib he assisted American prison guards in basic translation to helping quell protests and riots; he was released in 2004.
Emad Khudhayir Shahuth al-Janabi was an Iraqi blacksmith detained in Abu Ghraib prison where he alleges he was abused by American military personnel and defense contractors.
Tony Blair was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007.
Events in the year 2011 in Iraq.
Rihab Rashid Taha al-Azawi is an Iraqi microbiologist, dubbed Dr Germ by United Nations weapons inspectors, who worked in Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program. A 1999 report commissioned by the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) named her as one of the world's most dangerous women. Dr Taha admitted producing germ warfare agents but said they had been destroyed.
Ali Shallal al-Qaisi is an Iraqi civilian who was captured in United States custody during CIA interrogation and tortured at Abu Ghraib Prison in 2003. His name became known in 2004 when the prisoner torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib made news.
Boys of Abu Ghraib is a 2014 American war film inspired by the events that took place at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, Iraq in 2003, in the background of the Iraq war. It was written and directed by Luke Moran, who co-stars alongside Sean Astin, Omid Abtahi, Sara Paxton, and John Heard. Filmmakers Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz served as executive producers on the film, which was produced by Luke Moran and Cru Ennis.
During the Iraq War, occupying U.S. forces set up camps and converted existing prisons in Iraq to detain POWs, suspected terrorists, and insurgents who were opposed to the American occupation. While reports vary, from 2003 onwards U.S. troops stationed in Iraq detained more than 100,000 prisoners in the American-held detention complexes. Many of these detainments were later determined to be unlawful, and the treatment of the prisoners, inhumane. While the most prominent case of unlawful imprisonment, torture, and prisoner abuse occurred at Abu Ghraib prison, several other detainment centers were revealed to have operated in a similar fashion, most notably at Camp Bucca and Camp Cropper.
