After photos of American soldiers humiliating Iraqi prisoners appeared in the media in April 2004, the world demanded to know what was going on behind the closed doors of the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, just outside Baghdad.
The American government responded by publicly handing down sentences to the military personnel directly involved. But this film shows how US policy had earlier redefined torture to allow extreme interrogation.
Solitary confinement, noise, light, dark, extreme sensory disorientation, stress positions, phobias (such as dog attacks), sexual humiliation techniques and enforced nudity had become the US military's weapons.
Fresh-faced, but with a glazed look in their eye and forced steadiness in their voice that hints at the shocking scenes they have witnessed, the former guards of Abu Ghraib - the military personnel who had become prison guards without any training - talk frankly about their experiences.
Saddam Hussein tortured and executed tens of thousands of political prisoners at Abu Ghraib before the US-led coalition took over in 2003. When the Americans arrived, they found the place eerie, frightening, with its empty corridors and smell of death.
'It's like a combination of Apocalypse Now meets the Shining - except it's real and you're in the middle of it,' is how one interviewee describes it.
It was necessary to interrogate 'detainees', we are told, because there was a degree of panic about the lack of intelligence about the insurgency. But it seems that in Abu Ghraib the tone was set for the Americans to imitate the inhuman tactics of Saddam's regime.
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