Trophy photos' led to soldiers' demotions

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By Toni Locy, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — In "trophy photos" taken in Afghanistan in late 2003 and early 2004, masked U.S. soldiers posed with their weapons pointed at the heads of detainees, according to U.S. Army documents released Thursday by the ACLU.

A platoon of military police assigned to Fort Drum, N.Y., took so many pictures, the documents say, that a soldier later told investigators that he had planned to catalogue them onto CD-ROMs. One disk for his fellow soldiers would have included photos of a dead Afghan man; another version for the soldiers' family and friends would have excluded the picture of the man.

Eight soldiers were demoted and had to forfeit pay after the photos were found in June 2004 in an office at Fire Base Tycze in Afghanistan, the Army records say.

The photos had been taken about the time that U.S. military police were abusing Iraqi detainees — and photographing them — at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. Those photos, which became public last spring, drew worldwide criticism of the U.S. military's treatment of detainees.

The Army documents released Thursday also say that U.S. soldiers in Iraq videotaped a beating they gave last spring to an Iraqi man who had been accused of rape.

The documents highlight a question that has dogged the Pentagon since the Abu Ghraib scandal broke: whether soldiers received written guidance on how to handle detainees. In the records released Thursday, the MPs in Afghanistan told investigators that they had not received such instructions.

"From the taking of prohibited photographs to the actual torture of prisoners, the administration has shown open disregard for the protections of detainees under the Geneva Conventions," ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said.

The Army said Thursday that several probes into detainee abuse have been done and that it will address "identified problems in detainee operations."

The ACLU got the Army records through a lawsuit that seeks government documents concerning allegations that captives held in Afghanistan, Iraq and Cuba have been tortured. In a series of releases, agencies have given the ACLU documents detailing hundreds of allegations of detainee abuse.

The photos of the dead Afghan were taken after he wounded three soldiers, the records say. The unidentified soldier who took the photos told investigators he wanted his wounded comrades to see what had happened to the attacker.

The Army records say the soldiers in the photos obscured their faces. They later told Army investigators the guns were not loaded. Several soldiers told Army investigators they didn't know they had done anything wrong until they saw the outrage over the abuse at Abu Ghraib.