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

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, ...

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

Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...

. He was featured in the 2008

Academy Award The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...

-winning documentary ''

Taxi to the Dark Side ''Taxi to the Dark Side'' is a 2007 American documentary film directed by Alex Gibney, and produced by Gibney, Eva Orner, and Susannah Shipman. It won the 2007 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. It focuses on the December 2002 killing of ...

''.https://us.imdb.com/title/tt0854678/ Lagouranis was born in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rock ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

, and graduated from high school in 1987 in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, going on to study

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic pe ...

as part of his degree program at St. John's College in

Santa Fe, New Mexico Santa Fe ( ; , Spanish for 'Holy Faith'; tew, Oghá P'o'oge, Tewa for 'white shell water place'; tiw, Hulp'ó'ona, label= Northern Tiwa; nv, Yootó, Navajo for 'bead + water place') is the capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico. The name “S ...

, and

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

at the

Defense Language Institute The Defense Language Institute (DLI) is a United States Department of Defense (DoD) educational and research institution consisting of two separate entities which provide linguistic and cultural instruction to the Department of Defense, other ...

Monterey, California Monterey (; es, Monterrey; Ohlone: ) is a city located in Monterey County on the southern edge of Monterey Bay on the U.S. state of California's Central Coast. Founded on June 3, 1770, it functioned as the capital of Alta California under b ...

. For roughly 10 months in 2004, Lagouranis was stationed in

Abu Ghraib prison Abu Ghraib prison ( ar, سجن أبو غريب, ''Sijn Abū Ghurayb'') was a prison complex in Abu Ghraib, Iraq, located west of Baghdad. Abu Ghraib prison was opened in the 1950s and served as a maximum-security prison with torture, weekly exe ...

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

Baghdad Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon ...

and for a short time in the Iraqi city of

Mosul Mosul ( ar, الموصل, al-Mawṣil, ku, مووسڵ, translit=Mûsil, Turkish: ''Musul'', syr, ܡܘܨܠ, Māwṣil) is a major city in northern Iraq, serving as the capital of Nineveh Governorate. The city is considered the second larg ...

, 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 {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Iraq War {{Nobold, {{lang, ar, حرب العراق (Arabic) {{Nobold, {{lang, ku, شەڕی عێراق (Kurdish languages, Kurdish) , partof = the Iraq conflict (2003–present), I ...

veterans who provided first hand accounts of the torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners by members of the US military. (Others have given similar accounts while shielding their identities.) In his op-ed for the ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', 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. He is grandson of the prominent Greek lawyer, Lieutenant Colonel of the Army, General Staff Officer during WW2 and subsequently member of the Resistance, Constantine Lagouranis (1898-1953).

Filmography

*2006 - '' Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers'' *2007 - ''

Ghosts of Abu Ghraib ''Ghosts of Abu Ghraib'' is a 2007 documentary film, directed by Rory Kennedy, that examines the events of the 2004 Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal. The film premiered January 19, 2007, at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. The film a ...

'' *2007 - ''

References

External links

Comprehensive article in ''Chicago Reader'' about Tony Lagouranis
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lagouranis, Tony 1970 births Living people United States Army personnel of the Iraq War United States Army soldiers People from Chicago American whistleblowers St. John's College (Annapolis/Santa Fe) alumni American people of Greek descent Defense Language Institute alumni