ANALYSIS - US Leaders Yet To Be Held Responsible For Abu Ghraib Torture Scandal 15 Years On

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 20th March, 2019) There still has been no accountability for the top rank of US officials in the Abu Ghraib torture case after 15 years and President Donald Trump's crackdown on the International Criminal Court has just exacerbated the climate of impunity, analysts told Sputnik.

Tuesday marked the 15-year anniversary of the US military charging six soldiers for abusing inmates at Abu Ghraib.

After the US and allied conquest of Iraq in 2003, US Army and CIA personnel committed a series of human rights violations against detainees in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq including physical and sexual abuse, torture, rape sodomy and murder according to documented accounts.

The abuses came to widespread public attention with the publication of photographs of the abuse in 2004. The incidents received widespread condemnation both within the United States and abroad.

The administration of President George W. Bush asserted that these were isolated incidents and not indicative of general US policy. However, this was disputed by the Red Cross, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other humanitarian bodies.

On February 28, US District Judge Leonie Brinkema allowed a lawsuit by three ex-inmates of Abu Ghraib against military contractor CACI Premier Technology to proceed. The case, originally filed in 2008 alleges that military police tortured the prisoners at the direction of civilian contractors like CACI.

A handful of low-ranking soldiers were later prosecuted and those convicted received light sentences. But no one further up the chain of command was ever brought to court or held accountable, University of Illinois Professor of International law Francis Boyle told Sputnik on Tuesday.

"I got involved in this case and we found out all about the massive torture that was going on over there,"

Boyle said. "I do not believe any of the people in the chain of command were ever held accountable."

Torture is a very serious offense under the Geneva Convention and the torture at Abu Ghraib was widespread and systematic, Boyle pointed out.

"That makes it a crime against humanity. Such activities are outlawed under the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court. Some of the soldiers who were tried and convicted of conducting torture got less severe sentences than Sergeant Camilo Mejia did who exposed it," Boyle said.

Prosecutors sought a four year sentence for Mejia but his lawyers got it reduced to eight months and he was adopted by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience, Boyle recalled, who contrasted this US impunity.

"There has been no responsibility or punishment assigned to any higher ranks in the chain of command. It has been covered up," Boyle said.

Responsibility for the torture, he added, went all the way to the top including General John Abizaid who headed US Central Command and all forces in Iraq from 2003 to 2007.

Abizaid has now been nominated by President Trump to be the next US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Boyle noted.

"He should have been prosecuted. Everyone in that chain of command should have been prosecuted," Boyle said.

The US government is against any kind of investigation by the International Criminal Court and when Barack Obama was US president he too did absolutely nothing about prosecuting responsible officials, Boyle recalled.

All the reports were that the CIA was involved with the torture too, Boyle said.

Dr. Jeffrey Kaye, a clinical psychologist and independent journalist who has written extensively on torture agreed with Boyle's assessment.

"The US has not held anyone in its command structure, whether in the military or the intelligence services, responsible for a policy of torture of prisoners and detainees," Kaye told Sputnik.

A few lower level interrogators and guards have been prosecuted, Kaye observed.

"Major figures like CIA Director Gina Haspel, have been protected and promoted," he said.

A subset of torture procedures involving use of isolation and sleep and sensory deprivation have been kept intact in the US military's field manual on interrogation, Kaye noted.

These practices have been condemned by the UN's Committee Against Torture, but supported by both Republicans and Democrats in the US Congress, according to Kaye.

"With the Trump administration placing of sanctions on... institutions like the ICC, the US has declared itself a torture nation, immune from prosecution for war crimes," Kaye said. "These crimes... weigh heavily and negatively upon US civil society... fostering a no accountability culture."

Institute for Public Accuracy analyst Sam Husseini stressed that the torture practiced at Abu Ghraib was just the tip of the iceberg.

"Recall, that torture was used to extract false confessions that facilities the lies of the Iraq invasion from the start. It's not that torture doesn't work, it's that it's used to get 'information' that is false but politically useful, like the idea that Iraq had WMDs or had connections to al-Qaeda [terror group banned in Russia]," Husseini told Sputnik.

The US government barely held anyone responsible for the atrocities and crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan, Husseini confirmed.

"Everyone in the Bush administration got off Scot free and has now been 'Trump-washed,'" he said.

Obama, Husseini added, kept Bush's Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and gave cover to Secretaries of State John Kerry and Hillary] Clinton "who both voted for the Iraq invasion."

The criminality and lies around the US invasion - and the refusal to hold any of the high level culprits responsible doubtlessly fueled much opposition to the US government's actions in various countries in various ways, Husseini pointed out.

"Why does the US oppose International Criminal Court investigations and threatens its judges with sanctions? Is this behavior helpful with regard to preventing future war crimes? The US government generally seeks to act with impunity. It wants to be above the law," he said.

The US government has long refused to submit to the ICC or to any other international legal authority. But the Trump administration had now gone above and beyond that with these new steps against the ICC, Husseini warned.