Abu Ghraib documentary premieres at Berlin film fest
BERLIN (AFP) — A searing documentary about the prisoner abuse scandal at Iraq's Abu Ghraib jail premiered Tuesday at the Berlin Film Festival, reopening one of the most shameful chapters of the US-led war.
In "Standard Operating Procedure", Oscar-winning director Errol Morris uses recovered footage, reenactments and the notorious photographs published round the world to shed light on the forces behind the sexual and physical maltreatment of Iraqi inmates at the hands of US troops.
The film avoids the familiar ground widely documented after the first incriminating images surfaced in 2004: the global public outrage, the trials and the eventual apology by US President George W. Bush.
Instead, in probing interviews with the troops, Morris shows their contrition but also their anger as their superiors go unpunished.
The troops' candid confessions, shot in Morris's trademark close-ups, fly in the face of claims that the events at Abu Ghraib were a mere aberration.
The soldiers describe massive pressure from the highest echelons of the military to acquire "actionable intelligence" to stop the bloody insurgency in Iraq and locate then fugitive leader Saddam Hussein.
"We were told to soften them up for interrogation," Specialist Lynndie England, who was sentenced to three years in prison in 2005, tells Morris.
But the soldiers soon realise that the vast majority of the "high value" inmates at the prison, used as the primary interrogation centre in Iraq, were probably average family men with no involvement in attacks on US troops.
England, whose round face and thumbs-up sign were seen in a dozen key photographs depicting sexual humiliation and beatings of Iraqi prisoners, speaks with bitterness about her role in the affair.
Her dark hair now grown out to a feminine bob and her expression hardened, England denounces her former fiance, Specialist Charles Graner, who was handed a 10-year sentence.
"I was blinded by being in love with a man," she says with a wry smile, after cataloguing the difficulties women in the military face.
Sixteen years her senior, Graner is depicted by England and others as a ringleader of the abuse but was not allowed to speak with Morris.
Other soldiers describe their mounting frustration over hazing by fellow troops, incessant mortar attacks by Iraqi insurgents, frequent rioting at the prison and the sheer boredom that fed the sadism against the inmates.
The commanding officer at Abu Ghraib, then Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, maintains her innocence in interviews with Morris, saying she was unaware of the abuse and kept in the dark about how interrogations were prepared and conducted.
She was later stripped of her rank.
Morris won an Academy Award for his incisive 2003 documentary "The Fog of War" about former US defense secretary Robert McNamara and the invasion of Vietnam.
His films "The Thin Blue Line" about the death penalty in the United States and "A Brief History of Time" on the disabled British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking were also international successes.
Faced with critical questions about subjecting the Iraqi prisoners once again to a wide public viewing of the photographs, Morris said he had their interests and his "horror at current American foreign policy" in mind when he made the film.
"To me these pictures were very, very, very important and rendered an important social service. Without them we would know nothing. We would be blind to this moment in history," he told reporters.
"One of the things that I hope to do with this film is bring us into that history and force us to think about it."
Morris said he tried for months to locate former inmates featured in some of the most infamous photographs but decided in the end to limit his focus on the US soldiers.
"If you ask me are these pictures of torture, I would say 'yes, yes they are'," he said. "And yet they were defined by the US military as...Standard Operating Procedure. You are talking about a world that has gone mad."
"Standard Operating Procedure" is the first documentary ever to enter the competition at the Berlinale.
It is one of 21 pictures in the running for the festival's prestigious Golden Bear top prize, to be awarded Saturday.
