Guards and detainee at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, Iraq on Dec. 12, 2003.

© 2006 Associated Press

Pictures of Detainee Abuse to be Released

by Jennifer Brown

The US Defense Department will release pictures depicting the abuse of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan that took place during the Bush administration, according to firstamendmentcenter.org.

The order release the photos is a response to a Freedom of Information Act suit filed in 2004. The American Civil Liberty Union said that these photos show that prisoner abuse was happening in places other than Abu Ghraib. The ACLU believes these photos are necessary to give the public the full scope of what’s really happening to war prisoners.

“These photographs provide visual proof that prisoner abuse by U.S. personnel was not aberrational but widespread, reaching far beyond the walls of Abu Ghraib,” Amrit Singh, staff attorney with the ACLU, said in a press release. “Their disclosure is critical for helping the public understand the scope and scale of prisoner abuse as well as for holding senior officials accountable for authorizing or permitting such abuse.”

The Bush administration had been fighting to keep the photos under wraps ever since the ACLU had asked them to be released in 2003, claiming that the photos would bring about public outrage and also violate the U.S.’s obligation to the Geneva Convention.

However, last September the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the administration’s arguments and decided these photos held enough interest to the public that they had to be released. On April 23, 2009, the Justice Department issued a letter signed by Acting U.S Attorney Lev L. Dassin stating that the government must give full discloser of the photographs and reiterated the court’s refusal to rehear the case.

The photographs will be released on May 28.

Questions:

1. What cases could be argued about how the chilling of speech to make the point that this could be unconstitutional?

2. The Bush administration argued these photographs would cause public outrage. What exception to the federal FOIA could the Bush administration argue?

3. As far as distribution of the photographs goes, what rights do you think the people who were photographed have? Do those photographed have a case for libel?