Abu Ghraib Accountability Gap

Yesterday’s verdict in the trial of Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan means that no one in the Army’s upper ranks will be imprisoned for the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in 2003. As HRF’s Hina Shamsi told the AP: ”None of the cases brought to date has given the systemic accounting the nation needs of what happened, why and how far up the chain of command responsibility lies.”

HRF’s Washington Director, Elisa Massimino also weighed in in today’s Washington Post:

“This was the one that everyone was waiting for, and more than anything else,
the trial and verdict in this case demonstrates that there is an enormous
accountability gap left,” Massimino said. “They have almost completely missed
the real point.”