Abu Ghraib Torturer Confesses
Posted on | June 12, 2007
Former US Army Specialist Tony Lagouranis remains haunted by the acts he committed in Iraq. He
…conducted mock executions, forced men and boys into agonising stress positions, kept suspects awake for weeks on end, used dogs to terrify detainees and subjected others to hypothermia.
But he confesses that he was deeply scarred by the realisation that what he did has contributed to the downfall of American forces in Iraq.
Mr Lagouranis, 37, suffered nightmares and anxiety attacks on his return to Chicago, where he works as a bouncer.
Between January 2004 and January 2005, first at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison - by then cleaning up its act as the prisoner abuse scandal was breaking - and then in Mosul, north Babil, he tortured suspects, most of whom he says turned out to be innocent. He says that he realised he had entered a moral dungeon when he found himself reading a Holocaust memoir, hoping to pick up torture tips from the Nazis…
The campaign group Human Rights Watch and two of Mr Lagouranis’s fellow interrogators have confirmed the details of his account. His book was cleared for publication by the Pentagon.
Perhaps our nation will have some soul-searching to do, too, once we gather the courage to end this war.
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