WASHINGTON — In a case that echoes the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq, U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan posed before cameras while threatening to shoot prisoners in the head, shoving a detainee into a wall and punching another inmate. The troops also mugged for "trophy shots" with the corpse of an enemy fighter who had invaded their camp last year.
According to military documents disclosed Thursday, the soldiers, fearing "another public outrage," destroyed many of the photos and video images after photographs of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib were beamed around the world, resulting in widespread shock and criticism.
The remaining images were discovered by happenstance last year during the routine cleaning of a captain's office at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan.
The photos -- apparently shot at a small base in the Central Asian country around the same time the abuses were occurring at the large Iraqi prison -- triggered an Army investigation centering on soldiers from a platoon within the 22nd Infantry Battalion, 10th Mountain Division, based at Ft. Drum, N.Y. The inquiry led to preliminary charges against eight soldiers for dereliction of duty after the Army decided more serious assault charges would not hold up.
It was unclear, however, whether the eight were ever prosecuted or disciplined. It was also unclear whether charges were brought against supervising officers in Afghanistan who admitted they had ordered the destruction of many of the photos after the Abu Ghraib scandal erupted.
The Army said Thursday when asked about the case that it remained "committed to addressing identified problems in detainee operations and to communicating the progress to the public." Officials at the Pentagon, Army headquarters, the Army Criminal Investigation Command and at Ft. Drum did not respond to queries seeking more information about the status of the investigation.
Hundreds of pages of Army investigative records, made public Thursday as a result of a public records lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, recount interrogations of dozens of soldiers who were confronted with the photos. Most admitted to military investigators that they were posing in them. Many acknowledged that their behavior was wrong.
The documents are the latest indication of alleged U.S. military abuse of detainees in Afghanistan. Military investigators are probing a December 2002 incident in which two detainees died after being captured and beaten.
