US:New horrifying photographs of the torture and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners were published in yesterday's Washington Post, which also put the first video clip showing abuse on its website.
Documents obtained by the Post claimed that some prisoners at Abu Ghraib jail outside Baghdad were ridden like animals, sexually fondled by female soldiers and required to retrieve their food from toilets.
Some of the mainly Muslim prisoners were forced to denounce Allah and praise Jesus, according to the secret sworn statements from detainees.
In one photograph, a naked prisoner covered with a brown substance like excrement is forced to walk in a straight line with his ankles cuffed towards a baton-wielding guard.
In another, a detainee cowers as a large black dog bares its fangs at him.
The new material was obtained by the Post on Thursday, according to the executive editor, Leonard Downie. It is not known if they are among the hundreds that the Pentagon showed privately to members of Congress.
On the 57-second video clip on washingtonpost.com, which was broadcast throughout the day on television, military guards are seen forcing a naked and shackled detainee to crouch and crawl around, and roughing up others with their hands tied behind them and hoods over their heads.
The Post said the testimony was obtained from 13 Iraqi detainees by army investigators for use in courts-martial of seven US guards.
The first soldier accused in the scandal, Specialist Jeremy Sivits, was sentenced on Wednesday to a year in prison for sexually humiliating detainees and taking pictures of prisoners stacked naked in a human pyramid.
The Wall Street Journal yesterday reported new instances of abuse uncovered in an army report.
In one account given to investigators, a detainee, Kasim Mahaddi Hilas, said he heard screaming and witnessed an Iraqi translator in uniform raping a boy aged 15-18 while "the female soldier was taking pictures."
The statement was included in the recent army report on abuse at Abu Ghrail and read to the Wall Street Journal.
The paper also disclosed that an employee of Titan Corporation in San Diego which provides translators to the US army admitted he helped hold down three Iraqi detainees who were "nude, handcuffed to each other and placed in sexual positions."
The accusation on top of bribery charges against Titan consultants could jeopardise the pending sale of Titan to Lockheed Martin, the paper said.
NBC news disclosed that the US army's elite Delta Force was being investigated by the Pentagon for the "most egregious" abuse against detainees at a secret prison near Baghdad Airport, where prisoners were allegedly hooded, drugged and held under water.
Also yesterday, in the first case of its kind, a military jury in the state of Georgia convicted a US soldier of desertion for leaving his combat unit in Iraq in protest at the war.
Staff Sgt Camilo Mejia of the Florida National Guard was found guilty by a jury of four officers and four enlisted soldiers and faces up to a year in jail.
Mejia (28) testified that he disobeyed orders to return to his unit after a furlough to seek status as a conscientious objector.
He told the New York Times there was a growing rage among US troops at Iraqis, whom they called "Hajis". He became upset after seeing a friend who was a sniper shoot dead a child of about 10, he said. On Capitol Hill yesterday a House committee hearing on Iraq erupted in partisan bickering between Democrats and Republicans in front of senior Pentagon generals waiting to testify.
During one exchange Army Chief of Staff Peter Schoomaker quietly got up and left, while General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, remained with another officer listening to Democrats argue with the Republican chair that the committee should be more agressive in pursuing the abuse scandal.