MATTHEWGOODONLINE

The ongoing trials regarding the premeditated rape and murder of 14 year old Abeer Qassim al-Janabi, and the murder of her parents and younger sister, has produced another verdict. Yesterday, Private Jesse Spielman was “convicted of conspiracy to rape and murder” and sentenced to 110 years in prison for his role in the crime.

While Speilman did not take part in the murders or rape, he was instrumental in their planning and acted as a lookout while his fellow soldiers committed the crime mere feet from him. Thus far, his is the longest sentence to be handed out. Three of the others involved in the crime received between five and 100 years after cutting deals with prosecutors. The group’s supposed ‘ringleader’, now discharged Private Steven Green, is being tried in Kentucky and faces the death penalty, which I am obviously against. Personally, he should be made to smash giant rocks into commercial gravel every day for the rest of his life with the world’s smallest hammer.

The following article might be a little stunning to some. I have always believed the exposure of Joe Darby by former Defense Secretary to be no accident, rather a calculated step to detract from the fact that what occurred at Abu Ghraib with regards to prisoner abuse and interrogation went much higher than merely a handful of MP’s.

It’s no secret, given various accounts, that not only were US military intelligence personnel in and out of the prison, but private contractors as well. There have even been reports that Israeli intelligence was also seen at the notorious prison.

That said, what defines and patriot? In the case of Joe Darby, it’s a moral man being exposed to grave injustices and having the guts to bring them to light. That said, one has to wonder at the actions of those that would view his decision to expose what occurred as traitorous…

“The US soldier who exposed the abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison found himself a marked man after his anonymity was blown in the most astonishing way by Donald Rumsfeld.

When Joe Darby saw the horrific photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison he was stunned.

So stunned that he walked out into the hot Baghdad night and smoked half a dozen cigarettes and agonised over what he should do.

Joe Darby was a reserve soldier with US forces at Abu Ghraib prison when he stumbled across those images which would eventually shock the world in 2004.

They were photographs of his colleagues, some of them men and women he had known since high school - torturing and abusing Iraqi prisoners.

His decision to hand them over rather than keep quiet changed his life forever.

The military policeman has only been allowed to talk about that struggle very recently, and in his first UK interview, for BBC Radio 4’s The Choice, he told Michael Buerk how he made that decision and how he fears for the safety of his family.

He had been in Iraq for seven months when he was first handed the photographs on a CD. It was lent to him by a colleague, Charles Graner.

Most of the disc contained general shots around Hilla and Baghdad, but also those infamous photos of abuse.

At first he did not quite believe what he was looking at.

“The first picture I saw, I laughed - because one, it’s just a pyramid of naked people - I didn’t know it was Iraqi prisoners,” he says.

“Because I have seen soldiers do some really stupid things. As I got into the photos more I realised what they were.

“There were photos of Graner beating three prisoners in a group. There was a picture of a naked male Iraqi standing with a bag over his head, holding the head, the sandbagged head of a male Iraqi kneeling between his legs.

“The most pronounced woman in the photographs was Lyndie England, and she was leading prisoners around on a leash. She was giving a thumbs-up and standing behind the pyramid, you know with the thumbs-up, standing next to Graner. Posing with one of the Iraqi prisoners who had died.”

Joe Darby knew what he saw was wrong, but it took him three weeks to decide to hand those photographs in. When he finally did, he was promised anonymity and hoped he would hear no more about it.

But he was scared of the repercussions from the accused soldiers in the photos.

“I was afraid for retribution not only from them, but from other soldiers,” he says.

“At night when I would sleep, they were less than 100 yards from me, and I didn’t even have a door on the room I slept in.

“I had a raincoat hanging up for a door. Like I said to my room mate, they could reach their hand in the door - because I slept right by the door - and cut my throat without making a noise, or anybody knowing what was going on, and I was scared of that.”

When the accused soldiers were finally removed from the base, he thought his troubles were over.

And then he was sitting in a crowded Iraqi canteen with hundreds of soldiers and Donald Rumsfeld came on the television to thank Joe Darby by name for handing in the photographs.

“I don’t think it was an accident because those things are pretty much scripted,” Mr Darby says.

“But I did receive a letter from him which said he had no malicious intent, he was only doing it to praise me and he had no idea about my anonymity.

“I really find it hard to believe that the secretary of defence of the United States has no idea about the star witness for a criminal case being anonymous.”

Rather than turn on him for betraying colleagues, most of the soldiers in his unit shook his hand. It was at home where the real trouble started.

His wife had no idea that Mr Darby had handed in those photos, but when he was named, she had to flee to her sister’s house which was then vandalised with graffiti. Many in his home town called him a traitor.

“I knew that some people wouldn’t agree with what I did,” he says.

“You have some people who don’t view it as right and wrong. They view it as: I put American soldiers in prison over Iraqis.”

That animosity in his home town has meant that he still cannot return there.

After Donald Rumsfeld blew his cover, he was bundled out of Iraq very quickly and lived under armed protection for the first six months.

He has since left the army but did testify at the trials of some of those accused of abuse and torture. It is Charles Graner he is most afraid of.

“Seeing Graner across the courtroom was the only one that was difficult during the trial,” he says.

“He had a stone-cold stare of hatred the entire time - he wouldn’t take his eyes off me the whole time he sat there. I think this is a grudge he will hold till the day he gets out of prison.”

Mr Darby and his family have moved to a new town. They have new jobs. They have done everything but change their identities.

But he does not see himself as a hero, or a traitor. Just “a soldier who did his job - no more, no less”.

“I’ve never regretted for one second what I did when I was in Iraq, to turn those pictures in,” he says.”

Of course, the American people were never exposed to the worst of the content, such as video of a US soldier raping and Iraqi woman, or an Iraqi father and son made to perform sexual acts on one another.

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