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Iraqi Prisoner Abuse Photos: Charles A. Graner Jr.

by sources
A local Army reservist facing potential court-martial on charges that he abused and humiliated Iraqi prisoners under his watch previously faced allegations of making physical threats against his own family.
Charles A. Graner Jr., 35, of 52 Johnson Ave., Uniontown, who works as a state prison guard in civilian life, since 1997 has been accused three times of abusing his former wife, Staci, and their two children, according to Fayette County Court records.
graner1.jpg
Graner didn't show up for his last court appearance in March 2001, records show.

As a result of that hearing, Fayette County Judge Ralph Warman issued a protection from abuse order against Graner stemming from allegations made by his wife. She claimed her husband yanked her from her daughter's bed by her hair, dragged her into a hallway, and "banged" her head against the floor during a domestic argument.
...
In court papers, Staci M. Graner said her husband has an extensive history of abusing her and his two children. She said he threatened to kill her and their children, installed a video camera in their home without her knowledge and repeatedly broke into the home.

Her lawyer, Nicholas Timperio, of Uniontown, said he was impressed at the time with Charles Graner's apparent concern for his children.

"Before all of his problems, I thought he was a decent guy. Obviously, I was wrong," Timperio said Tuesday.

The couple divorced in 2000. There was no record that Graner violated his PFA orders, and he was never charged with a crime.

Yesterday, Graner's Uniontown residence appeared vacant. Neighbors said his former wife and their children, now 11 and 13, have moved away.

Graner, a corporal, is among six soldiers of the 372nd Military Police Co., based in Cumberland, Md., facing courts-martial in Iraq on criminal charges of dereliction of duty, cruelty and maltreatment, assault and indecent acts with another person for allegedly abusing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib Prison near Baghdad late last year.

...

"From all the information I've seen and heard on television, including statements from Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, it's obvious these soldiers were acting on orders from intelligence officers over there. One technique to break down prisoners being interrogated is through psychological manipulation ... by demeaning and degrading them," Womack said.

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/trib/news/s_192620.html
§Charles Graner
by sources
capt.pack10105072028.us_prisoner_abuse_pack101.jpe
Family photographs of Lynndie England are held up at a news conference in Fountain, W. Va., Friday, May 7, 2004 by England's best friend Destiny Goin, left, and Englands older sister Jessica Klinestiver. The photograph on the far left is of Lynndie England and her brother Josh, the image center is England at her prom with Goin on April 28, 2001. The image right of England and Charles Graner taken sometime last year while on vacation in Virginia Beach. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

UNIONTOWN, Pa. - When Army Reserve Spec. Charles A. Graner Jr. was called to active duty in March 2003, he phoned a neighbor to say goodbye and draped the American flag he flew from his front porch neatly inside a first-floor window.
In the last year, few in this left-behind coal town near the West Virginia border received any word about Graner. But last week, images of the 35-year-old Pennsylvania corrections officer - widely identified as among the soldiers gleefully posing alongside a pile of naked Iraqi prisoners - have been sent around the world.
Now, the 12,500 residents of Uniontown, which markets itself as the hometown of Gen. George C. Marshall, are grappling with a less honorable wartime legacy: a local soldier at the center of a scandal that has undermined the U.S. military, inflamed the Arab world, and sent President Bush into damage-control mode.
"It's certainly not something anyone around here can be proud of," said Helen Queer, 76, who lives on Graner's block. "They were supposed to watch over those prisoners, not treat them so terribly. They deserve to be punished."
Graner - a guard at one of Pennsylvania's toughest state prisons, in Waynesburg - is among six soldiers from the Cresaptown, Md.-based 372d Military Police Company who faces a possible court-martial in connection with the abuse of Iraqis detained at Abu Ghraib prison.
In photos first broadcast last week on 60 Minutes II, military police officers are shown giving thumbs-up signs while naked Iraqi men are crouched atop one another in a teetering pyramid, or forced to simulate sex acts.
The male soldier who appears most prominently in those images - wearing green gloves, eyeglasses, a bushy mustache, and a buoyant grin - has been identified as Charles Graner by local media, his relatives and acquaintances.
Graner's Houston-based attorney, retired Marine Lt. Col. Guy L. Womack, said his client was simply following orders from Army intelligence commanders. Ranking officers staged humiliating photos as a means of coercing other detainees into cooperating with military and CIA interrogators, he said.
"Their mission was to apply psychological pressure to the point where the prisoners would break down and provide much-needed information, and they went about it by staging these humiliating photos," Womack said yesterday. "I'm not saying that's right, but that's what was happening. The soldiers who were on the scene following orders, like my client, have become scapegoats."
Evidently, Graner is not ashamed of his role in the scandal. An estranged relative, who agreed to be interviewed on the condition of anonymity, said Graner recently sent an e-mail home in which he seemed to revel in the media coverage, writing, "The smile I practiced my whole life I get to see on TV now."
Graner's attorney said his client saw no grounds for an apology.
"His spirits are high. He knows he didn't do anything wrong," Womack said. "He feels terrible that the whole world thinks he's done wrong. But because of the environment in Iraq, his primary concerns right now are life and death."
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/breaking_news/8608044.htm?1c

A lawyer for one of the servicemen accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners told NBC News on Tuesday that his client's superiors should be on trial, not "the soldier who was following orders."
Spc. Charles Graner was ordered to take pictures of prisoners in sexual positions and even to pose with them, Guy Womack said on NBC's "Today" show.
"They were obviously staged, they were part of the psychological manipulation of the prisoners being interrogated," he added, and were ordered by intelligence and CIA officials in charge of the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad.
Womack agreed that the photos were "abhorrent," but insisted that the soldiers who took them were doing so in the context of interrogation procedures.
Asked if he thought the treatment of the prisoners warranted courts-martial, Womack said it could "but you court-martial the right person, you don't court-martial the soldier who was following orders."
Graner is among six military police who face criminal charges. Seven others have been reprimanded in the alleged abuse.
newsweek.msnbc.com


Guy Womack of Houston, Texas, the attorney representing Charles A. Graner Jr. of Uniontown against prisoner abuse allegations in Iraq, is a retired U.S. Marine who served in the infantry and as an attorney in the Judge Advocate General's office.
He reached the rank of lieutenant colonel
"There aren't many Marine lawyers out there," Womack said. "I do a lot of military cases due to my background."
In June 2002, he said he won an acquittal for Mark Walker who was charged with negligent homicide for "accidentally" running over two Korean girls in June 2002 while was serving in the military there.
http://www.heraldstandard.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=11461155&BRD=2280&PAG=461&dept_id=480247&
Add Your Comments

Comments (Hide Comments)
by g scott
so what ,does any one remember 911 and the young men and women that have died because of all of this .so they are PRISONERS those scum bags would not treat our own any differant or may be they would like just killing them or beating then till they said the right thing and then kill then or drag there bodys through the streets or ,Well i hope you all get the picture .ya your right USA should have never
got involve ,then we could go back and rebuild what they distroyed or maybe we should have just drop the bomb
by finish grade school, then post.
Not a single Iraqi was involved in 9/11.

That was a lie the president told to manufacture consent for an illegal war of occupation and, it turns out, gratuitous brutality.

The truth is, the US Army is as bad as the regime of Saddam Hussein, at least when it comes to running prisons. Go reflect on that, G Scott. The Iraqis have cared for their prisoners of war humanely while the US Armed Forces ran rape rooms and made snuff films.
by b real
"The truth is, the US Army is as bad as the regime of Saddam Hussein, at least when it comes to running prisons..."

Dude, you are on glue, brain dead, or both. To even try to compare the abusers in the US army to the Baath regime shows how rotted your brain is. When the US army starts hanging people from their thumbs and is murdering people in mass, then we can talk about comparisons. Until then, this remains the action of a few bad apples.
by ashamed to be an American
iraq.has.been.disarmed.jpgdefxnh.jpg
They've killed more Iraqis. They're killed more people, period. And they don't mind mutilating children, if it means America gets cheap gasoline.
by L. Huidekoper (lynn_huidekoper [at] hotmail.com)
Charles and Lynndie can't hide behind "they were forced to do it by higher ups". Do they really think we are that stupid? Charles has a long history both at home and at work as a prison guard of being a deviant, violent person. Sexual humiliation of the prisoners was a routine act of his in a PA. prison. Lynndie is obviously a follower. After 9/11 she allegedly said "I'm gonna go and get me some Arabs". For her mother to be so co-dependent and defend her daughter's deviant behavior is sad. I hope they think hard and long at the devastating fallout their selfish,sick behavior has caused against truly honorable Americans in Iraq. Americans will get murdered because of their abhorrent acts that they deliberately caught on film.
by david
Ireqi trade our POW better than how we trade them
by Not Ashamed
Ashamed... your gas is cheaper than it was a year ago?
If you're ashamed there are numerous options at your disposal because of being American to correct your humility of being American. Take a vacation to Iraq and come back and report to us how it went.

The people that have setup and taken the photos are not the majority and are part of the same fringe you are ... someone that may have been born here but not acting like an American or appreciating what that is.
by Not Ashamed
David. If you think Iraqi's treat our POWs better than they are being treated review the video released recently, the pics of our burned bodies hanging from bridges.

Ps... if you're American - I'd be surprised with your english, or you're 12 years old... please go on vacation with Ashamed and come back with a report on your own. Maybe we'll see the sick video footage of how it went for you too.

The people involved in the prison pictures will stand trial, the people that abduct civilians, both their own and ours, and torture them, gas them, gouge their eyes out and then kill them - parade and string them up on bridges in your opinion are the good guys?

Well, either way, they're waiting for you too... the majority of our military and others in the free world were not involved in these pics and are the only things between them and you, tell them thanks even if you aren't American.
by tony a. (asd [at] aol.com)
you guys are bunch of fu..... american brainwashed assholes
iraq and 9-11 are two different things. america wake up you guys have been dreaming for a long time. you are so gullible and stupid that yoiu really believe everything the govt. tells you. fucking bush is ruining this country for a long time.
by Honest
Iraqis burnt the bodies in Faluja because these bodies are of the war criminals who tortured them. I am afraid the torture pictures represent what deep inside the so called "liberators" and that’s why Iraqis start to resist after they were dancing in the streets with the Americans when they entered Baghdad. Can you tell one thing good happened to the Iraqis after the illegal war?!! Sadam being treated as a respectable POW and his victims being tortured by psychologically disturbed people who claimed that they are “liberators” of the Iraqis
by they had it coming
They weren't POWs. POWs must, by definition, be members of a national military, who were in unoform when captured. These guys were mercenaries, ie., "enemy combatants." They had it coming. If mercenaries invaded your country, would you treat them any better?
by Anon
There is no such thing as an "enemy combatant". That's just words and phrases used by government officials to blatently and unlawfully do away with the Geneva Convention. If Saddam had done any of this he would be tried with war crimes (which he is). The people who committed these acts are WAR CRIMINALS and should be charged in Iraqi or international courts.

We are beggining to repeat what happened in the 1930s and 40s. These were hate crimes, the most audacious of which were committed against youth. I do not condone violence on any one side, what the "enemy combatants" have done is wrong, what soldiers do is wrong. Killing, injuring, hurting another human being is wrong.

peace,
love,
anonymous
by Aaron Z
Proud to be an American and not the scum that have hung our fellow Americans from bridges
by Proud to be an American and not the scum that
Proud to be an American and not the scum that have hung our fellow Americans from bridges
by Jim D
For all of you who think it is so bad to be an American, take a stroll in Iraq and maybe you'll be lucky to have a masked man behead you. This will truly show us how much better off we are that you chose to stand by your principles and head to the middle east where they treat others humanely.
by Fuck You: The US is *worse* than Saddam
Fuck You: The US is *worse* than Saddam
by ashamed to be an American
Under Saddam, his enemies sufferd horribly. Everybody else lived well by regional standards. Health care and education were free. The water was safe to drink. Electricity was on 24/7. Women had equal rights. It was safe to to walkaround at night.

Now, after America has killed over half a million Iraqis, most of them women and children, and destroyrd the economy and the infrastructure, the place is a living hell.

Compared to the Americans, Saddam was a saint.
by ashamed to be an American
ali_ismaeel_abbasne.jpgqwee1m.jpg
by USA KILLS
Are you so stupid you think that Iraqis run around chopping heads off of innocent civilians. Besides being extremely ignorant you can be that educated either, because any intelligent person knows that an illegal invasion against Iraq's independence warrants anything they do. Anything! How would you feel if another country invaded yours? I bet you wouldn't welcome them. They cut off a few heads and people are so disgusted. you know what disgusts me, US troops forcing fucking prisoners into sexual acts with each other while they smile for the cameras. God help us all.
by Dead Iraqi
May this rotten, wicked, evil country rot in hell. It doesn't deserve to exist. Fuck the USA!
by The Canadian
He is lucky to have only 10 years of prison...
He should be hung up by the nuts!!!
by Jacobs
America will never gain the respect of other nations untill it backs up its rhetoric. A country of verbal tripe. Liberation, War on Terror. What the hell do you guys talk about? Speak English for gods sake. More like Invasion, $, and Intimidation. America doesnt really understand the role of differences of opinion although it so professes to do.

America likes enemies, always has, and people who have differences of opinion from the central line are accused of being unamerican. Whats with that ? I thought freedom of speech was american. Make up your mind fellas. Just because your brought up with the Americas is great crap. You guys should actually get passports and travel the world. Actually scrap that stay there. How can you say America is great when you can`t actually apreciate another country?

Democratic? The 3 tier lobby system of government with little or no limits on election funding makes it near impossible to move from your rightist money grabbing sytem with people pushing for selfish political agendas like war soley for P R O F I T. And it`s so easy to do with a gullible public caught up in this nationalism, sorry you guys call it patriotism. My country is in the war for cash and I`m ashamed of that. Atleast we realise it.

Whats with the "your either with us or against us mentality". Freedom fries? A country that refuses to be intimidated by America is labelled as a traitor. My country I`m sorry to say decided to join them, majorily for the benefit of a free trade agreement. Australia is weak. New Zealand the moral leader of the pacific. The France of Oceania, not that it matters, but in there little country they hold more integrity than the whole US.

But does America seriously want to help create a free world as it says it does? Surely if it did, it would aproach this objective in a manner that reflected the kinds of societies it wishes to grow. Not through arrogant flouting of international rules and accords. If it does this it will only plant the seeds of the things it is trying to rid the world of. Ever heard of a stiff upper lip?

Who said that the American torturers will be trialed? A few to satisfy a home media untill American nationalism can be drummed up so it can start pushing more people around. To satisfy it`s own needs. Guantanamo Bay is the real issue here as it reflects this open defiance of the Geneva Convention. It is institutionalised, illegal, done with full knowledge of the US government, unconstitional and against everything the US professes to be. But I guess so was slavery, racism, the propping up of right wing oppressive dictatorships, an actual lack of cooperation on terrorism before 9\11 ( ie IRA and the Tamil Tigers funding from within the US), an convenientally lax prssure on illegal Israeli actrions. Hang on isn`t Israel the only counrty in the Middle East with nuclear capabilities. It goes on... etc, etc,etc. Its all bullshit and I will never believe a word from the American government. Your system makes me cringe. Stop hiding behind your flags. Pull them down and maybe you will be able to see more clearly. Relfect your actions on yourself. You seem to be one of the most christian countries of the world without actually adhering to any of the values of christianity. If the bible is right it would be interesting to see your leaders meet their maker. You also seem to be in need of political change, but oh that can`t be right because Amercia is the best isn`t it? Oh ofcourse you must have the best system.

It seems that a large part of America doesnt even realize this. IRAQ DID NOT ATTACK AMERICA. You cant move goal posts after the kick has been played. Well maybe you can and you are. But it`s all Bullshit.

****Major major apoligies to all the Americans fighting for good within America. Speak louder please. My perceptions of your country ofcourse are not true or typical of those within America but outside this is pretty much how many many pople think of your country. Not of your Americans but of your country. I mean. How could we ever trust you?
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