What happened at Abu Ghraib?

Various forms of torture were performed at Abu Ghraib prison by military police officials and the investigators themselves.



 Detainees were usually abused usnaked wearing only sacks or hoods over their heads. In Arab culture this was a humiliating task as homosexuality and being naked in front of other men is condemned.



They were beaten, forced to stand in stress positions for hours at a time, held without food, water, blankets, bedding, toilets, and other basic amenities that are common in the jails in the U.S. Photographs discovered showed the guards enthusiastically mistreating the detainees.



The MP’s when questioned argued that their orders to harass and torture the prisoners of the “hard site” came from the interrogators themselves and even further up their chain of command. They thought that this new way of handling prisoners in a war time situation was the proper way since no one had informed them otherwise. The prison riot of 2003 only made the situation worse for the detainees. The guards became animalistic in nature when they felt that their safety was being compromised, they acted out by using brutality against the detainees. Mentally the guards were angry at the situation they were in and the easiest way to release their anger was to take out their aggression on those in captivity. Interrogators praised the guards for their work inside the prison, stating that they were receiving quality information from the detainees and that their methods were actually working. To the guards, this was their confirmation that they were doing their job properly regardless of what their morality was telling them.