More abuse photos add to US shame

The collection of photographs begins like a travelogue from Iraq. From US soldiers posing in front of a mosque and a soldier riding a camel....

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The collection of photographs begins like a travelogue from Iraq. From US soldiers posing in front of a mosque and a soldier riding a camel. And then: a soldier holding a leash tied around a man’s neck in an Iraqi prison. He is naked, grimacing and lying on the floor.

Among more than 1,000 digital pictures obtained by The Washington Post are photographs of naked men, apparently prisoners, sprawled on top of one another while soldiers stand around them. The graphic images, passed around among military police who served at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, are a new batch of photographs similar to those broadcast a week ago on CBS’s 60 Minutes II and published by The New Yorker magazine. They appear to provide further visual evidence of the chaos and unprofessionalism at the prison detailed in a report by Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba.

The photographs range from mundane images of everyday military life to pictures showing crude simulations of sex among soldiers. The new pictures appear to show US soldiers abusing prisoners, many of whom wear ID bands, but The Post could not eliminate the possibility that some of them were staged. The photographs were taken by several digital cameras and loaded onto compact discs, which circulated among soldiers in the 372nd Military Police Company, an Army Reserve unit based in Cresaptown, Maryland. The pictures were among those seized by military investigators probing conditions at the prison, a source close to the unit said. The probe has led to charges being filed against six soldiers from the 372nd.

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Since the 60 Minutes II broadcast, pictures of abuse have been posted on the Internet and played on TV stations worldwide. In Fort Ashby, West Virginia, two siblings and a friend identified Pfc. Lynndie England, 21, as the soldier appearing in a picture holding a leash tied to the neck of a man on the floor. England, a member of the 372nd, has also been identified in published reports as one of the soldiers in earlier pictures that were made public, which her relatives also confirmed on Wednesday. England has been reassigned to Fort Bragg, N.C., her family said. The military has not charged her in the case.

England’s friends and relatives said the photographs must have been staged. ‘‘It just makes me laugh because that’s not Lynn,’’ said Destiny Goin, 21, a friend. ‘‘She wouldn’t pull a dog by its neck, let alone drag a human across a floor.’’ England worked as a prison clerk, her family said. Other soldiers would ask her to pose for photographs, said her father, Kenneth England. ‘‘That’s how it happened,’’ he said. Soon after CBS aired its photographs, Terrie England said she received a call from her daughter. ‘‘ ‘Mom,’ she told me, ‘I was in the wrong place at the wrong time’,’’ Terrie England said.

The pictures obtained by The Post include shots of soldiers simulating sexually explicit acts with one another and shots of a cow being skinned and soldiers posing with its severed head. And in another picture, a young woman lifts her shirt, exposing her breasts. She is wearing a white band on her wrist, but it is unclear if she is a prisoner. —(LAT-WP)