Warning: This article and videos contains graphic images that some viewers may find disturbing.
It was a year into the Iraq war.
I was in the living room with my father watching Al Jazeera- Arabic. At the time we were nervously following the developments of the conflict, my parents were particularly worried about their family back home.
I usually wasn’t allowed to watch Al Jazeera news- my father always worried about the graphic images and videos that were broadcast, a few minutes later I realised why that was.
I only managed to catch a glimpse of the picture on screen before my father told me to go into my room but it was enough to keep me up that night.
The picture of naked male prisoners stacked in a human pyramid while they were cuffed and chained would soon become ‘The images that shocked the world’.
I recall watching a woman on television wailing on the streets of Baghdad at a protest against the invasion yelling, “How dare they humiliate and degrade our honour and our men.” I couldn’t help but agree with her.
Ten years on, the Abu Ghraib torture pictures still retain their title.
On April 28, 2004 60 Minutes II reported on the leaked images depicting U.S military personnel torturing and sexually abusing Iraqi prisoners, who were held in Iraq’s infamous Abu Ghraib prison.
After the news broke, the United States Department of Defence removed 17 soldiers and officers from duty and launched an official investigation.
In total, 11 soldiers were convicted and sentenced to military prison while others were given dishonourable discharged from service. The worst of the offenders also known as the ‘ring leaders’, Specialist Charles Graner, and his former fiancée, Specialist Lynndie England, were sentenced to ten years and three years in prison.
Despite the passing of time, the images still haunt Iraqis today.
For many the images were confronting, some media outlets refusing to rebroadcast them while others like The Economist plastered them on the front cover calling for Rumsfield’s resignation.
For Iraqis, it was the public humiliation of a nation.
As an Iraqi I knew what Abu Ghraib stood for, why it was Saddam’s house of horrors.
To see prisoners who were detained with no charges laid covered in their own faeces, forced into sodomy, coerced to line up nude as a female solider poses with the thumbs up, was rubbing salt in an already excruciating wound.
Iraqis living in Australia today are looking back at the images and recounting their reactions.
Former Iraqi refugee and site manager, Layla Khatoon says, “It was Disbelief at first, how can America disregard human rights for the very same Iraqis that they came to protect from Saddam's abuses? I believe the community has not moved on, what happened Abu Ghraib is entrenched in the psyche of all Iraqis.”
Shireen Al Hary, an Arabic teacher who migrated to Australia from Iraq in 1996 says she felt betrayed.
“I know that Iraq wasn't the greatest but there was no dignity in how the prisoners were handled,” she told me. Regardless what they did, Americans had no right to mistreat them. To me it was a national insult to all Iraqis.”
I recall watching a woman on television wailing on the streets of Baghdad at a protest against the invasion yelling, “How dare they humiliate and degrade our honour and our men.”
I couldn’t help but agree with her.
The images were perhaps equally humiliating for the U.S government.
Iraqis were already feeling hostility towards the U.S led invasion, a far cry from Bush’s ‘Mission Accomplished’ declaration.
Despite George Bush apologising for the torture, his remarks that it was the case of ‘a few bad apples’ certainly didn’t give any closure to the people of Iraq, the families of the victims and the victims themselves.
The torture photos are photographic evidence of betrayal, failed democracy and anything but an Operation of Iraqi Freedom.
It's ironic that these military personnel were placed in Iraq to free the people from Saddam's torture tactics, only to find themselves recreating them in the very same torture chamber it took place in.
Watch: Former Dateline reporter Olivia Rousset talks about her Abu Ghraib stories
In 2009, the Iraqi government tried to give Abu Ghraib a face-lift in a desperate attempt to shift the public’s perception of it.
With an upgraded hospital room, gateways lined with flowers and prisoners dressed in their best navy jumpsuits, it was indeed an impressive renovation. But not even the freshly painted cream walls could remove the stench of bloodshed over decades of torture.
A week ago the Iraqi government officially announced that Abu Ghraib has shut down indefinitely. In a statement, the Justice Ministry said, there are fears that Abu Ghraib could be overrun by insurgents who have gained strength over the last year.
The 2,400 prisoners have since been moved to various prisons across Iraq.
Abu Ghraib’s cells are now empty, its hallways echo with the screams of its victims as it closes its doors on an era of torture. But the space it occupies in the collective memory of Iraqis will remain.
The perpetrators including various members from the US government may have avoided appropriate persecution by the criminal justice system, but neither can escape from the judgement of history.
Warning: Graphic images contained beyond this point - view discretion is advised.
Dateline: Abu Ghraib — The sequel
In 2006, Dateline revealed a new batch photos and videos depicting the torture inflicted on prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Scroll down to see some of the images unearthed by reporter Olivia Rousset and the Dateline team, or watch the report in full.
“Back in 2004 when the first shocking pictures were originally leaked, the world recoiled in horror, but since then the Bush Administration has fought tooth and nail to prevent the American public from seeing any new images of the treatment of Iraqi detainees, but tonight Dateline reporter Olivia Rousset reveals new photos and videos. Despite the currently overheated international climate, we are showing them because they show the extent of the horror that occurred at Abu Ghraib. A serious warning though - some of the images you're about to see are pretty confronting and may offend some of you.”
