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Agence France-Presse

They are like the infamous images from Abu Ghraib prison, only worse. Iraqi civilians in Mosul facing rape, torture and murder from members of their own army who had retaken the city from Islamic State.
“They are the most sinister, upsetting pictures I have seen in my entire life,” the veteran BBC war correspondent Jeremy Bowen said of the images taken by Kurdish photographer Ali Arkady.
This weekend, the brutal series of pictures called “Kissing Death”, taken by Arkady tok last year while embedded with members of an Iraqi special forces unit, won France’s top prize for war correspondents, at the Bayeux-Calvados Awards on Saturday.
The photographs were not just “really strong” said Bowen, who chaired the Bayeux-Calvados jury, “they were evil”.



But it wasn’t only their content that disturbed the jury. Arkady, 34, admitted to being pressured into hitting two suspects during a torture session to save his own skin, actions of which he said he was “not proud”.
They started torturing people, raping women. Everything changed in my mind. I was confused
War photographer Ali Arkady
But other war photographers asked whether a line had been crossed.
While Bowen insisted that “the service he did by taking those pictures is more powerful that the fact he made some mistakes”, others were not so sure.
Another member of the jury, who asked not be named, said that he was disturbed by the ethical issues the “shocking” pictures raised.
“The story is not clear. A lot of people think he has been very brave in telling this story ... but I think we are not sending the right message in rewarding this type of work,” he added.
Arkady was forced to flee Iraq with his family earlier this year, bringing with him images and films which he said proved war crimes were committed by the Emergency Response Division (ERD) which he had followed for two months.
Arkady said he kept working with the unit after the torture began partly from guilt because he had painted the soldiers as heroes in an earlier report for the US television network, ABC.
“What began for Ali as a positive story about Shia and Sunni Iraqi soldiers fighting on the same side against a mutual enemy, turned into a horrific journey that included torture, rape, killing and thieving of innocent Iraqi civilians by the ERD,” said the US-based photo agency, VII, who helped get him out of Iraq.
I think it is very important he admitted the mistakes he made. In moral terms, he is not a torturer
BBC correspondent Jeremy Bowen on Ali Arkady
“I’d seen two heroes (the unit’s commanders) do something bad,” Arkady said. “They started torturing people, raping women. Everything changed in my mind. I was confused. I decided to investigate more.”
Bowen, who has spent decades reporting from the Middle East, said the fact that Arkady had exposed abuses that would otherwise have gone unreported was the overriding factor.
“I think it is very important he admitted the mistakes he made. In moral terms, he is not a torturer,” he said.
Award-winning British war photographer Sean Smith of The Guardian, who was not on the jury, said he “would not condemn” Arkady either.
For him, however, “the system which put him in that position – where often inexperienced locally hired freelance ‘stringers’ provide the coverage” from dangerous war zones, is the real problem.
“The whole thing has got so compromised because major news organisations are sending fewer and fewer experienced people,” he said.
“There is no one there. Virtually all the coverage is coming from stringers and social media,” he said.
Stringers often go “from not covering anything to covering extreme stuff. They just feed the machine” of photo agencies that want to show “they are still in the business even if they don’t cover most things any more.
“And then when something goes wrong, the guy becomes a scapegoat and everyone becomes very self-righteous.”
VII co-founder Gary Knightsaid the agency did not know what Arkady had uncovered while he was working on the story.
“We did not pressure Ali to publish the images, the opposite is true,” said Knight.
“We suggested that he think long and hard ... because we knew that he would have to leave the country for his own security – possibly forever – if he did,” he added.
Knight said he and the agency’s other acclaimed war photographers Christopher Morris and Ron Haviv had mentored “Ali for years to offer him support and advice”.
Smith said although Arkady should not have taken part in torture, photographers were sometimes put in desperate positions.
“If you go with people like that you can’t say, ‘I don’t agree with what you are doing.’ You blend in and disappear, you may even end up getting drunk with them.”
For there is always “a very real danger you can end up dumped by the side of a road with a bullet in your head”, he said.


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Middle East

Photographer Ali Arkady captured images of evil as Iraqi torturers went to work – then they asked him to join in

A photo taken by Ali Arkady in late 2016 shows a prisoner of Iraqi forces outside Mosul, strung up by his wrists. Photo: Ali Arkady

Iraqi photographer Ali Arkady receives the Photo Prize award during the closing ceremony of the 2017 Bayeux-Calvados Awards for war correspondents in Bayeux, northwestern France, on October 7, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / CHARLY TRIBALLEAU

Iraqi military operations in Mosul between 7/11/2016 to 20/12/2016 with the Iraqi ERD forces from southern Mosul in (Hammam Alalil) town and (Gogjali) town East of Mosul. The pictures show the daily life of the ERD fighters on the front lines of the battle, efforts to liberate the areas and villages outside of Mosul, people displaced from Mosul, and night raids. During this period the ERD carried out humanitarian violations including rape, torture, and killing of Iraqi civilians.

A winch, a chain and a hook: inside the Islamic State’s secret prison and torture chamber in Fallujah

Burnt out prison cells are seen in a makeshift Islamic State prison in Fallujah after government forces recaptured the city. Photo: Reuters

An Iraqi officer inspects a recently discovered burned prison belonging to Islamic State militants in Fallujah, Iraq, Sunday, June 26, 2016. A senior Iraqi commander said the city of Fallujah was "fully liberated" from Islamic State militants on Sunday, after a more than monthlong military operation. (AP Photo)

Activist ‘still recovering from torture’ inflicted in Chinese prison

Wang Qingying at his home in Guangzhou. Photo: Mimi Lau

Amnesty alleges Italian police torture migrants to obtain their fingerprints

Migrants wait in line after disembarking from a Spanish Navy cruiser in the Sicilian harbour of Catania, Italy, last week. Photo: Reuters

Migrants wait after disembarking from Spanish Navy cruiser Navarra in the Sicilian harbour of Catania, Italy, October 26, 2016. REUTERS/Antonio Parrinello

Amnesty claim refugees tortured and ‘driven to suicide’ at Nauru camp disputed by Australia

An Amnesty International photo claiming to show children playing near the fence at Australia’s detention centre on the Pacific island nation of Nauru. Photo: Reuters

An undated supplied image from Amnesty International claiming to show the view of the living quarters for single women at the country's Australian-run detention centre on the Pacific island nation of Nauru. Amnesty International/Handout via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. EDITORIAL USE ONLY. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVE.

Anna Neistat, Senior Director for Research with Amnesty International, talks to journalists behind a copy of a report she co-authored titled 'Island of Despair - Australia's "Processing" of Refugees on Nauru' in Sydney, Australia, October 17, 2016 that concludes many of the 410 asylum seekers held on the tiny Pacific Island are being driven to attempt suicide to escape the prison-like conditions they face in indefinite detention on behalf of Australia. REUTERS/David Gray

A relative of asylum seekers, currently being held on the tiny south Pacific island of Nauru, known only as 'Fida', cries during a media conference to officially launch rights group Amnesty International's report titled 'Island of Despair - Australia's "Processing" of Refugees on Nauru' in Sydney, Australia, October 18, 2016. REUTERS/David Gray

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World

‘They are the most sinister, upsetting pictures I have seen in my entire life’
