Confirmed: Unreleased Torture Photos Did Show Rape and Sexual Assault

This week, the Daily Telegraph reported that the torture photos President Obama recently decided to withhold from the public depict “rape and sexual abuse.” The Pentagon denied the report, saying, “None of the photos in question depict the images that are described in that article.” But yesterday, Scott Horton reported that he has confirmed that the photos do, in fact, “depict sexually explicit acts,” including “a government contractor engaged in an act of sodomy with a male prisoner and scenes of forced masturbation,” as well as “penetration involving phosphorous sticks and brooms.” Horton writes further:

A senior military officer familiar with the photos told me that they would likely provoke a storm of outrage if released. … Some show U.S. personnel engaged in sexual acts with prisoners and each other. In one, a female prisoner appears to have been forced to expose her breasts to be photographed. In another, a prisoner is suspended naked upside down from the top bunk of a bed in a stress position. [...]

Still other withheld photographs have been circulating among U.S. soldiers who served in Iraq. One soldier showed them to me, including a photograph in which a male in a U.S. military uniform receives oral sex from a female prisoner.

Horton also obtained what he characterizes as “rarely seen Abu Ghraib torture photos,” which can be viewed here.