Eric Stover, Alexa Koenig, and Victor Peskin write for Alameda Magazine, Sept. 2015
By late summer 2003, Abu Ghraib was packed with nearly 3,000 prisoners. Many of the detainees were Iraqi civilians who had been picked up in random military sweeps or at checkpoints for “suspicious activities.” Most were men, but there were also women, adolescents, and even children as young as ten, the majority of whom were deemed not a threat to society but who were not immediately released due to orders from above.