US prisoner abuse photos released

This video from the USA says about itself:

Fernando Botero, Artist in conversation with Robert Hass, Professor of English, UC Berkeley, Poet Laureate of the United States (1995-1997).

Fernando Botero, the most famous living Latin American artist, will display his Abu Ghraib paintings at the University of California, Berkeley. These 47 paintings and drawings belong to a long tradition of artistic statements against war and violence that include Goya’s Caprichos and Picasso’s Guernica.

Organized by the Center for Latin American Studies, these paintings have never been displayed in a public institution in the United States. The exhibit was “proposed to many museums in the U.S,” according to the artist, but all declined to show it.

The human cost of war, visual art: here.

From The Raw Story in the USA:

Pentagon may have up to 2,000 photographs of prisoner abuse

Stephen C. Webster

Published: Friday April 24, 2009

The Pentagon will release for the first time 44 photographs depicting prisoner abuse after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) won a court ruling in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed in 2004.

A “substantial number of other images” are also being processed for release, the Department of Justice wrote in a letter to a US federal court: according to the Guardian, citing an unnamed official, that “substantial number” could be as many as 2,000 photos.

“These photographs provide visual proof that prisoner abuse by US personnel was not aberrational but widespread, reaching far beyond the walls of Abu Ghraib,” ACLU staff attorney Amrit Singh said in a release.

The Iraqi prison at Abu Ghraib became infamous after photographs showing Iraqi detainees being humiliated and abused by their US guards were published in 2004.

The latest disclosure “is critical for helping the public understand the scope and scale of prisoner abuse as well as for holding senior officials accountable for authorizing or permitting such abuse,” added Singh.