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Marking the 20-year anniversary of the start of the US invasion of Iraq, Photo Editor of The Intercept Elise Swain shed the light on tens of thousands of Iraqis who were interrogated and detained in the early years of the war, where CIA agents, military intelligence, military police, private contractors, special operations forces, and ordinary troops perpetrated treatment that can no longer be hidden behind euphemisms: it was torture.

The shocking images published in 2004 from Abu Ghraib prison-- one of the world's worst, most notorious detention facilities under the US occupation of Iraq-- showed humiliated, naked prisoners leashed, electrocuted, beaten, and piled in pyramids, with smiling military service members laughing and giving a thumbs-up over their bodies.

As the scandal came to widespread public attention, senior officials presented Abu Ghraib as a one-time occurrence, the result of "a few bad apples."

"We do not torture," President George W. Bush claimed. Even after the CIA's covert prison network was revealed, Bush and his defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, continued to violate the Geneva Conventions.

Those in positions of power who played dumb while making torture a policy escaped accountability, as is customary in the US, the report argues.

Even after the CIA's covert prison network was revealed, Bush and his defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, boldly continued to violate the Geneva Conventions.

Despite all of this, there have been no criminal court indictments, personal or professional ramifications, travel limitations, or sanctions flowing up the chain of command.

“If the US is truly ever interested in rectifying the horrific violence that it unleashed on Iraq, it could start by apologizing to and compensating the survivors of torture at the Abu Ghraib prison,” Maha Hilal, the director of the Muslim Counterpublics Lab and author of “Innocent Until Proven Muslim,” said as quoted by The Intercept. “Until it does, U.S. gestures towards justice in any capacity will remain symbolic and disingenuous.”

Military contractors, who were complicit in and actively involved in interrogations and torture, walked away untouched.

One tiny piece of horrors

Like all legal cases, this is just one tiny piece of the horrors of the invasion and the occupation which displaced and killed many thousands of Iraqis,” Baher Azmy, legal director of the CCR, said as quoted by The Intercept. “High-level Bush administration officials have not been held accountable for the lies and the murderous violence that they subjected the Iraqi people to. So, this is just one small part of the legal story.”

According to a Red Cross analysis, the majority of the individuals jailed across Iraq following the war were innocent. 70 to 90 percent of "persons deprived of their liberty in Iraq" were captured by mistake, as per the International Committee of the Red Cross.

“I believe that achieving justice begins with revealing all the details about the torture and acknowledging them on the part of the United States, then giving reparations to the survivors who were tortured unjustly, for no reason,” Salah Hasan, a plaintiff in the CCR suit who survived Abu Ghraib, said as quoted by The Intercept.

This #AbuGhraib detainee did not want to be just a number, so he decided to speak up.

During his interview for #AlMayadeen, Mohammad Belandian describes the horrific scenes that he witnessed and went through in Abu Ghraib #US prison. pic.twitter.com/VPLKj887PC

— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) August 22, 2022

One of those who filed a lawsuit, Hasan was arrested in November 2003 and brought through numerous detention facilities under US supervision, hooded and tied, before arriving in Abu Ghraib.

Hasan was stripped naked, held standing and hooded for hours, and restrained. Over the course of over two months, he described being kicked, beaten, deprived of food, and locked naked in complete isolation for the majority of his confinement.

Additional Abu Ghraib images were subsequently revealed more than a decade after the scandal broke. An American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit compelled the Military to turn over further proof of Iraqi atrocities; the additional 198 images provided were "the most harmless of the 2,000 that were withheld," as per ACLU.

Covering crimes

Censorship of this type – to conceal US crimes, specifically torture — has occurred numerous times. The full findings of the Senate investigation on CIA torture were never unmasked. The ACLU National Security Project chastised the Pentagon for continuing to hide evidence.

What the United States government can get away with is still impacted by the long-standing precedents of torture without trial.

“Though the Obama administration’s policy was to look forward,” Yumna Rizvi, a policy analyst for the Center for Victims of Torture, said as quoted by The Intercept, “the reality is that the lack of accountability has created an inability to move forward and essentially paralyzed the U.S. on many issues, including those related to the treatment of detainees at Guantánamo detention facility.”

“The United States of America should reconsider its policies, and at the very least, clean up the mess left behind,” Hassan said. “The U.S. must admit that it deceived the Iraqi people. But it is clear this is not in its consideration at all.”

Read more: Exclusive: Iranian father reveals painful abuse in Abu Ghraib prison