What Happened at Abu Ghraib?

Soon enough, some of the prison guards starting taking advantage of the power they had been given. During the fall of 2003, a few of the night shift prison guards took pictures with a digital camera of several abuse and torture sessions.

Soon after, a prison-wide riot broke out among the detainees. This only angered the prison guards more, and caused them to unleash their fury through abuse on the prisoners who started the riot. Told that the tortured prisoners would be interrogated to find the instigators of the prison riots, the guards took the abuse techniques to an all-time high, and took as many pictures as possible of the humiliated prisoners.

Although the MPs soon "softened up" on the inmates, the interrogations themselves became more dangerous. Inmates would come back from the interrogation booth battered, bruised and barely breathing from the beatings they had endured. Although deaths resulted from the beatings, only one was ruled a homicide. However, only the two MPs who photographed themselves with the dead body had charges brought against them. The civilian contractors who actually caused the death faced no legal punishment.