9.2 | 23 May 2003 to June 2004

In late April, allegations of abuse by Coalition soldiers in Abu Ghraib prison became public.

The Coalition, including the UK military, had been aware of the existence of these

allegations earlier in the year; on 16 January General Sanchez issued a statement saying

that he had ordered an investigation into abuse at an unnamed Coalition facility.535

Maj Gen Stewart told the Inquiry that he had been aware of the allegations from

early 2004.536

Charges were brought against six US soldiers in March 2004, but the details of the story

did not become public until late April, when the US television programme 60 Minutes II

ran a story documenting the abuses and showing some of the pictures taken by the

soldiers involved.537

Maj Gen Stewart was one of several witnesses who told the Inquiry that the pictures of

Abu Ghraib had had a “significant effect” on MND(SE), where the public began turning

against Coalition Forces.538

Allegations of abuse of Iraqi detainees by British Service Personnel also began to emerge

in early 2004. Almost immediately following the Abu Ghraib revelations, on 1 May the

Daily Mirror published photographs which appeared to show UK troops torturing an Iraqi

detainee.539 It was later established that those photographs were fake.

The photographs and accounts of events at Abu Ghraib generated a wave of

“shock and anger” across the world, along with repeated calls for the resignation of

Secretary Rumsfeld.540

In a telephone conversation with Mr Straw on 30 April, Secretary Powell said that he had:

“… taken Condi and Andy Card aside and said that there was nothing in the world of

public diplomacy which could conceivably offset the unbelievable damage done by

these images to the US cause, the reputation of its armed forces, and its standing in

the Arab world and beyond.”541

In Iraq, a poll by the Independent Institute for Administration and Civil Society Studies

in May 2004 found that confidence in Coalition Forces had dropped to 10 percent, from

28 percent in January 2004. Some 55 percent of those polled said they would feel more

safe if Coalition Forces left immediately; 54 percent said that they believed all Americans

behaved in the same way as the abusers at Abu Ghraib.542

535 BBC News, 16 January 2004, Iraq jail abuse probe launched.

536 Public hearing, 9 December 2009, pages 72-73.

537 Sanchez RS & Phillips DT. Wiser in Battle: A Soldier’s Story. HarperCollins, 2008.

538 Public hearing, 9 December 2009, page 72.

539 BBC News, 14 May 2003, Editor sacked over ‘hoax’ photos.

540 BBC News, 15 June 2004, Iraq abuse ‘ordered from the top’.

541 Letter Straw to Sheinwald, 1 May 2004, ‘Conversation with the US Secretary of State – 30 April 2004’.

542 Independent Institute for Administration and Civil Society Studies, 15 June 2004, ‘Public Opinion in Iraq:

First Poll Following Abu Ghraib Revelations’.

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