Two weeks ago, President Barack Obama abruptly changed course and refused to release photos that allegedly show American servicemen and servicewomen torturing detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now we have a better sense of exactly how horrible those photos might be. Major General Antonio Taguba, who was in charge of investigating the abuses at Abu Ghraib, told the British paper the Telegraph that the photos “show rape” of prisoners by Americans:
At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.
Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.
Gen. Taguba says he supports President Obama’s decision to withold the photos, arguing that “The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it.” Fine—the debate over whether to release the photos is legitimate. I have a more immediate question. If the government is in possession of photographic evidence of an American soldier raping someone, has that soldier been prosecuted? The relevant section of the Uniform Code of Military Justice is here:
(a) Any person subject to this chapter who commits an act of sexual intercourse with a female not his wife, by force and without consent, is guilty of rape and shall be punished by death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct.
It would take a pretty incompetent prosecution to fail to convict someone of a rape for which there is clear photographic evidence. But I can’t find any public reference to such a court martial, let alone a conviction. Earlier this month, ex-soldier Steven Green was convicted for raping and killing an Iraqi girl and killing her family, but that pretty clearly didn’t happen in prison, and there’s no mention of photographic evidence of it. So either the photos don’t show what Taguba says they show, or there’s something else going on here. People not identifiable in the photos, maybe? I’m looking into this.
