ABSTRACT
A hooded man is dressed in a black robe, arms outstretched in a pose that many commentators have compared to a crucifixion. His hands are attached to wires plugged into an electric socket, and he is standing on a box. He covers the entire front page of the Daily Mail on 30 April 2004 with the accompanying headline, ‘Tortured, abused and humiliated … The barbaric images that shame America’. He also appears on the cover of numerous international magazines, including Der Spiegel on 19 April with the headline ‘The folly of Baghdad’; The Economist on 8 May 2004, ‘Resign, Rumsfeld’ and the Guardian Weekend on 18 December 2004 summarizing the ‘year in words and pictures’. We call him the ‘crucifix man’, and on our count he is the most regularly reproduced iconic image to have emerged from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. For W.J.T. Mitchell, ‘The Hooded Man of Abu Ghraib, accused terrorist, torture victim, anonymous clone, faceless Son of Man, will remain the icon of our time for the foreseeable future’ (2011: 167).
