WASHINGTON, Feb 15: The Pentagon has confirmed the authenticity of a set of photographs of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib that were aired for the first time on Wednesday by Australian television, a defence official said.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the pictures matched those gathered by the US military two years ago as part of its investigation into the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.

Australian public broadcaster SBS aired the images, 15 of which also were posted on the website of the Sydney Morning Herald.

The graphic photos show naked inmates at the jail forced into sexually humiliating positions, handcuffed to beds and hooded.

The US defence official said only one of the photographs could not be authenticated because there were no people in it.

“The other 14 can be matched to a CID photo log and are authentic,” he said. The CID is the army criminal investigation unit that probed the abuse scandal. “There is nothing new here,” he said. The images “have been previously investigated as part of the Abu Ghraib investigation.”—AFP