ACLU pushes for release of US torture photos

The American Civil Liberties Union is pressing the US justice system to release the torture photos that demonstrate vicious prisoner abuses by US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In a recent measure, purportedly to safeguard US national security, the US Department of Defense (DoD) banned the photos, also claiming that they may endanger the lives of American soldiers.

ACLU has stated that it will continue its fight with the government over the release of some 44 additional photos depicting prisoner abuse at the US detention facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The advocacy organizations have rejected US government reports claiming that the abuses represent a few isolated cases.

"The number of the abuses and the location of the abuses would tend to show that the abuse was systemic and that it was carried out from a policy issued by the officials at the highest level," Jenny Brooke Condon, an ACLU lawyer, told a Press TV correspondent in Washington.

The banned photos, ACLU says, depict prisoner abuses in seven different US detention camps in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"The notion that we should withhold evidence of governmental misconduct, precisely because that evidence powerfully documents governmental misconduct, is our attempt to represent a democracy," said Alex Abdo, another ACLU lawyer.

Government documents suggest that some photos show soldiers pointing pistols or rifles at the heads of hooded and handcuffed detainees. Others, described by military reports, show detainees in restraint and humiliating positions.

Referring to the classified documents, Condon reiterated that these are "Photos that essentially would allow the American public to have a fuller picture of the abuses that were committed in the name of the United States."