Tony Lagouranis - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Specialist Tony Lagouranis (born c. 1969) is a former United States Army

United States Army

The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...

soldier, best known for having participated in torture as an interrogator during the occupation of Iraq

Iraq

Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....

.

He was born in Chicago, Illinois

Illinois

Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

, United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, and graduated from high school in 1987 in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, going on to study Ancient Greek as part of his degree program at St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Santa Fe is the capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico. It is the fourth-largest city in the state and is the seat of . Santa Fe had a population of 67,947 in the 2010 census...

, and Arabic

Arabic language

Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...

at the Defense Language Institute

Defense Language Institute

The Defense Language Institute is a United States Department of Defense educational and research institution, which provides linguistic and cultural instruction to the Department of Defense, other Federal Agencies and numerous and varied other customers...

in Monterey, California

Monterey, California

The City of Monterey in Monterey County is located on Monterey Bay along the Pacific coast in Central California. Monterey lies at an elevation of 26 feet above sea level. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 27,810. Monterey is of historical importance because it was the capital of...

.

For roughly 10 months in 2004, Lagouranis was stationed in Abu Ghraib prison

Abu Ghraib prison

The Baghdad Central Prison, formerly known as Abu Ghraib prison is in Abu Ghraib, an Iraqi city 32 km west of Baghdad. It was built by British contractors in the 1950s....

(Lagouranis was only at Abu Ghraib for a month and a half) near Baghdad

Baghdad

Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...

and a for a short time in the Iraqi city of Mosul

Mosul

Mosul , is a city in northern Iraq and the capital of the Ninawa Governorate, some northwest of Baghdad. The original city stands on the west bank of the Tigris River, opposite the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh on the east bank, but the metropolitan area has now grown to encompass substantial...

, where he claims to have observed and took part in a number of interrogation techniques including diet-alteration, the use of military dogs to induce terror, inducing hypothermia (with associated involuntary rectal thermometer readings), sleep deprivation, and the presence of ghost detainees.

Lagouranis is one of a handful of Iraq War veterans who provided first hand accounts of the torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners by members of the US military. (Others have given given similar accounts while shielding their identities.) In his op-ed

Editorial

An opinion piece is an article, published in a newspaper or magazine, that mainly reflects the author's opinion about the subject. Opinion pieces are featured in many periodicals.-Editorials:...

for the New York Times, titled "Tortured Logic", he argues that senior officers and politicians are successfully evading the responsibility they should bear for the abuse of prisoners in Iraq and elsewhere. His book, Fear Up Harsh: An Army Interrogator's Dark Journey through Iraq (co-authored with Allen Mikaelian), was published June 5, 2007.

Featured in the 2008 Academy award-winning documentary Taxi to the Dark Side

Filmography

2006 - Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers
Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers
Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers is a 2006 documentary film made by Robert Greenwald and Brave New Films about the ongoing Iraq War and the behavior of companies with no-bid contracts working in Iraq....
2007 - Ghosts of Abu Ghraib
Ghosts of Abu Ghraib
Ghosts of Abu Ghraib is a 2007 documentary film directed by Rory Kennedy. It is an examination of the events of the 2004 Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal. The film premiered January 19, 2007 at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival....
2007 - Taxi to the Dark Side
Taxi to the Dark Side
Taxi to the Dark Side is a 2007 documentary film directed by American filmmaker Alex Gibney, and produced by Eva Orner and Susannah Shipman, which won the 2007 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature...

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.