United States soldiers at a prison outside Baghdad have been accused of forcing Iraqi prisoners into acts of sexual humiliation and other abuses.
The charges, first announced by the military in March, were documented by photographs taken by guards in the prison.
Some of the photographs, and descriptions of others, were broadcast in the US on Wednesday by a CBS television news program and were verified by military officials.
Of the six people reported in March to be facing preliminary charges, three have been recommended for courts martial.
The program reported that poorly trained US reservists were forcing Iraqis to conduct simulated sexual acts in order to break down their will before they were turned over to others for interrogation.
In one photograph naked Iraq prisoners stand in a human pyramid, one with a slur written on his skin in English.
In another, a prisoner stands on a box, his head covered, wires attached to his body. The news show said that, according to the army, he had been told that if he fell off the box he would be electrocuted. Other photographs show male prisoners positioned to simulate sex with each other.
"The pictures show Americans, men and women, in military uniforms, posing with naked Iraqi prisoners," a transcript said.
"And in most of the pictures, the Americans are laughing, posing, pointing or giving the camera a thumbs-up."
The program's producers said the army also had photographs showing a detainee with wires attached to his genitals and another that showed a dog attacking a prisoner.
The photographs were taken inside Abu Ghraib prison, near Baghdad, where US forces have been holding hundreds of Iraqis.
Gary Myers, the lawyer for one of the enlisted men who has been charged, said the military had treated the six enlisted soldiers as scapegoats and had failed to deal adequately with the responsibilities of senior commanders and intelligence personnel involved in the interrogations.
Officers at the prison, including a brigadier-general, faced administrative review, officials said.
Mr Myers said that the accused men, all from a reserve military police unit, were told to soften up the prisoners by more senior interrogators, some of whom they believe were intelligence officials and outside contractors.
"This case involves a monumental failure of leadership, where lower level enlisted people are being scapegoated," Mr Myers said. "The real story is not in these six young enlisted people. The real story is the manner in which the intelligence community forced them into this position."
"He who hunts monsters must take care that he does not become a monster himself."
Indeed. And exactly what will the americans say when US soldiers/civilians are taken hostage and given the exact same treatment as these pictures reveal?
UPDATE: The scandal has also brought to light the growing and largely unregulated role of private contractors in the interrogation of detainees. According to lawyers for some of the soldiers, they claimed to be acting in part under the instruction of mercenary interrogators hired by the Pentagon.
The firms involved are CACI International Inc and the Titan Corporation.
Lawyers for the soldiers argue they are being made scapegoats for a rogue military prison system in which mercenaries give orders without legal accountability.
A military report into the Abu Ghraib case - parts of which were made available to the Guardian - makes it clear that private contractors were supervising interrogations in the prison, which was notorious for torture and executions under Saddam Hussein.
One civilian contractor was accused of raping a young, male prisoner but has not been charged because military law has no jurisdiction over him [...]
"It's insanity," said Robert Baer, a former CIA agent, who has examined the case, and is concerned about the private contractors' free-ranging role. "These are rank amateurs and there is no legally binding law on these guys as far as I could tell. Why did they let them in the prison?"
United States soldiers at a prison outside Baghdad have been accused of forcing Iraqi prisoners into acts of sexual humiliation and other abuses. 
