When was the last time you had to live with
nightmares, even after standing for the truth? When was the last time you had
to worry about you and your family’s safety because you stood against the
wrong? When was the last time you had to run away from your friends to tell the
rest of the world about their ill-doings, because you wanted to fight for the
truth? Well, Sergeant Joseph M. Darby has seen and done it all, in his years of
exposure at Abu Gharib, Iraq.
It all started when Joe Darby, serving as an MP at Abu
Gharib prison in Abu Gharib, Iraq accidentally came across a couple of CDs from
his unit’s camera buff, prison guard Charles Graner. Darby, in his deepest of
nightmares never imagined that the pictures stored in the CDs were going to
change the course of his life, once and for all.
At first, when he saw the pictures of abusive posing
and torturing, he thought it was some American soldiers’ goof up. But then he
realised it was the prison, and these were prisoners and the persons torturing
them were some of his friends and colleagues. “Disbelief,” as he says to 60
minutes, “I tried to think of a
reason why they would do this.”
As the pictures and the happenings’ reports suggest, there was a clear
human right violation in the form of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse,
including torture, reports of rape sodomy and homicide of prisoners held in the
prison. These acts were committed by military police personnel of the US army
along with additional US government agencies.
As soon as Darby had these pictures and came to know
about the facts, he realised he has to turn it in. He knew he had to hand them
over to the Criminal Investigation Division, but he wanted to remain anonymous,
because he knew these people were going to prison anyway, and once they know
it’s him, they will come after him till the end of the world.
The process got over with six of the seven persons
convicted, people who were torturing the Iraqis at the prison behind the bars.
But Darby still failed to sleep in peace because he knew one of them will come
after him, and his family. Though he doesn’t regret exposing the truth about
Abu Gharib prison. In the process, he had to testify some of his friends and
colleagues working at the prison. But as he says, “They broke the law and they had to be punished. To actually know what
they are doing, you can’t stand by and let that happen”
The United States Department of Defense removed
seventeen soldiers and officers from duty, and eleven soldiers were charged
with dereliction of duty, maltreatment, aggravated assault and battery. Between
May 2004 and March 2006, eleven soldiers were convicted in courts martial,
sentenced to military prison, and dishonorably discharged from service.
In 2010, the last of the prisons were turned over to
the Iraqi government to run.
Joe Darby received a John F. Kennedy Profile in
Courage Award on May 16, 2005, in recognition of his courage in exposing the
abuses at Abu Gharib.
