The Abu Ghraib whistleblower's ordeal (BBC News)

The US soldier who exposed the abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison found himself a marked man after his anonymity was blown in the most astonishing way by Donald Rumsfeld.

When Joe Darby saw the horrific photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison he was stunned. So stunned that he walked out into the hot Baghdad night and smoked half a dozen cigarettes and agonised over what he should do.

Joe Darby was a reserve soldier with US forces at Abu Ghraib prison when he stumbled across those images which would eventually shock the world in 2004. They were photographs of his colleagues, some of them men and women he had known since high school - torturing and abusing Iraqi prisoners. His decision to hand them over rather than keep quiet changed his life forever.

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And then he was sitting in a crowded Iraqi canteen with hundreds of soldiers and Donald Rumsfeld came on the television to thank Joe Darby by name for handing in the photographs. "I don't think it was an accident because those things are pretty much scripted," Mr Darby says. "But I did receive a letter from him which said he had no malicious intent, he was only doing it to praise me and he had no idea about my anonymity. "I really find it hard to believe that the secretary of defence of the United States has no idea about the star witness for a criminal case being anonymous." Rather than turn on him for betraying colleagues, most of the soldiers in his unit shook his hand. It was at home where the real trouble started.

His wife had no idea that Mr Darby had handed in those photos, but when he was named, she had to flee to her sister's house which was then vandalised with graffiti. Many in his home town called him a traitor. "I knew that some people wouldn't agree with what I did," he says. "You have some people who don't view it as right and wrong. They view it as: I put American soldiers in prison over Iraqis." That animosity in his home town has meant that he still cannot return there. After Donald Rumsfeld blew his cover, he was bundled out of Iraq very quickly and lived under armed protection for the first six months.

Full story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6930197.stm