Expert: 20 years since Abu Ghraib. Torture of prisoners continued iRADIO

In the current case, a trio of former Iraqi prisoners are suing the private security firm CACI. What was this company supposed to do?
That company should have been guilty of allowing American soldiers in the conditions that prevailed to do what they did, without further control in the prisons.

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It was an American attempt to hire the private sector to manage something that had until then been in the hands of the state.

In the newly built Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, a number of international and especially American companies were given the opportunity to participate in the establishment of a prison.

A certain part of some of those prison facilities were completely under the control of private entities and there was a lack of state supervision. So even the military personnel were without the control of their superiors and the matters that then shook the whole world were not reported.

And does this security agency accept shared responsibility for what happened in the prison in Iraq?
To be honest, I have absolutely no idea. I haven’t read any comments. I assume that this company will comment further on this as this trial goes on, but I really don’t know the details.

Eleven American soldiers have already been convicted by a military tribunal, but this case, the question of the security agency’s responsibility, is not being dealt with in court until 20 years after it happened. Why is it?
Here it is necessary to be aware of the context. From 2003 until recently, Iraq was essentially a dysfunctional, ruined country on the verge of collapse, as evidenced by the expansion of the Islamic State into its territory. Iraq was not exactly a country of rule and law, and certainly not at the international level.

This means that the legal environment and individual entities first had to crystallize.

In 2004, it was enough for the Iraqis that specific individuals were prosecuted, who were then brought before a military tribunal in the United States. But compensation for the inmates who were humiliated was not addressed.

Hussein’s prominent figures

A shocking report by CBS television, which showed what American soldiers are doing in prison Abu Ghraib committed, she wasaired about a year after a coalition of countries led by the United States invaded Iraq. What type of prisoners were in this prison at the time?
In this very initial phase of the entire conflict, of the entire sectarian violence in Iraq, it was mainly prominent figures of the former regime. Or supposed prominent figures of the former regime.

This means people who were suspected of working for the dictator Saddam Hussein and were involved in, for example, human rights abuses or the genocide of the Kurdish and Shiite populationin Iraq. This was the fault of the Iraqi armed forces.

Whether they were political representatives or military representatives of the former regime, they were targeted by harsh American interrogations, which were also very intensively criticized. At that time, the Americans were still looking for weapons of mass destruction, for which, as they declared, they entered Iraq in the first place.

How did the then administration of President George Bush respond to the discovery that several American soldiers had abused or sexually humiliated Iraqi prisoners?
The government had quite big problems at the time. This shook America’s reputation and really caused problems for Americans not only in Iraq but throughout the region.

On the one hand, the American reaction was rhetorically strong, that means mainly assuring the Islamic world that it was just the excess of a few people, that it is not a systemic issue and that, of course, the United States soldiers will treat Muslims, Arabs, Iraqis with sufficient respect.

But the real reaction was not what some would have imagined.

There were relatively few such sentences, moreover, according to many, they were also very mild. It was a few months of imprisonment, or degradation of rank. But nothing important happened.

Of course, system measures were set so that similar incidents did not occur. Although they continued to occur. Abu Ghraib was the strongest and most publicized case, but various abuses of prisoners continued in the following years.

So was this a systemic issue? Was it not just the excess of a few individuals, as President George W. Bush put it at the time?
This was a systemic issue. Those things were not revealed. The US administration worked to keep these things out of the public rather than actually happening.

This necessarily created pressure for increased control, either of the private sector or of American military personnel.

Of course, excesses can never be prevented, but the absence of control and the absence of law enforcement raised questions among many Iraqis, especially those who saw it as a double standard on the part of America.

While the Iraqi citizens were punished very quickly, decisively and harshly, the US military personnel themselves, if they committed anything, were sanctioned absolutely minimally.

What was the impact of the revelation of what happened in the Abu Ghraib prison cannon, on public opinion in the United States? And now I’m mainly referring to the opinion of the Americans on the whole war in Iraq.
Surveys show this nicely. It didn’t dramatically shake America’s belief that they should have gone into Iraq, because there were other reasons that caused embarrassment. Be it the fact that weapons of mass destruction were not found, or the fact that the Iraqi state basically collapsed under the hands of the Americans.

So those who were against the war remained against the war, those who supported the invasion of Iraq continued to support it.

Much more important was how it turned out in the Near and Middle East region, where the Americans really gained a very tarnished reputation.

It also managed to mobilize a large amount of opposition from across the Islamic world. And among other things—it’s not the only reason, but among other things—it also caused an influx of foreign fighters into Iraq who went there to fight against the United States, which was suddenly perceived as violating human rights. As one who treats Muslims in a humiliating manner on Muslim soil.

Islamists, extremists and terrorists managed to use this incident very, very well.

Lukáš Matoška

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