Nearly 200 images released by US military depict Bush-era detainee abuse

Bruises, reddened marks and bandaged body parts featured in nearly 200 images of US detainee abuse that the Pentagon was forced to release on Friday, the result of a court battle that has lasted more than a decade.

While the American Civil Liberties Union – which has fought for the publication of the photos of Bush-era torture in Iraq and Afghanistan since October 2003 – hailed the belated disclosure, it pledged to keep fighting for approximately 1,800 more images the Pentagon continues to withhold, which it believes documents far more graphic detainee torture.

The photos are part of a cache relevant to investigations of detainee abuse at two dozen US military sites around Iraq and Afghanistan, and perhaps Guantánamo Bay. Many showed detainees in states of undress having their bodies inspected, with rulers and coins held up for comparison and placement of injuries.

In November, Ashton Carter, the US defense secretary, cleared the way to release 198 of the images after a federal judge rejected longstanding government attempts to suppress the entire cache.

In allowing the release of the photos, Carter has reversed the decisions of two of his Pentagon predecessors and a bevy of senior military officers over the years. Nevertheless, the ACLU called the release insufficient, selective and indicative of a cover-up of detainee abuse stretching across the Bush and Obama administrations.

“It’s most likely the case that these are the most innocuous of the photos, and if that’s true, it’s a shadow of meaningful transparency,” said Alex Abdo, an ACLU attorney who has worked on the photo litigation since 2005.

The photos appeared decontextualized, without indication of what specific abuses investigators inspected, where detainees were held, or under what circumstances.

Several photos were grainy, showing sections of the body where detainees alleged US troops harmed them, without showing a person in full. Several images displayed detainees’ legs, backs, feet and occasionally their heads, though the head photographs did not show visible contusions.