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| Iraq-Jordan |
| US Occupation Regime Has Made Torture of Prisoners an Art |
| 2004-03-29 |
| From Jihad Unspun The occupation regime has made torture of the women prisoners an art, [Ms. Eman] Khammas [head of the International Occupation Watch Center in Baghdad] says, humiliating and abasing them. An Iraqi female attourney, aged 55, imprisoned for four months, was compelled to gather human waste in a large pot and boil it over a fire, stirring it as it cooked â all in full view of the male prisoners who started to chant âAllahu akbarâ (God is greatest!) when they observed this barbaric treatment being meeted out to a lawyer and matron. .... Khammas, says that the first violation committed by the occupation is to conceal the real number of prisoners inside the network of prisons in the occupied country. While the occupation talks in terms of only 13,000 prisoners distributed among nine prison camps, Khammas says that there are more than 80,000 prisoners in Abu Ghurayb concentration camp alone. Regarding the treatment received by the prisoners in Abu Ghurayb, Khammas says that available information from inside the prison is hard for the mind even to conceive. She cites a letter written by a female prisoner, smuggled out of the camp, and delivered to some Iraqi newspapers. In her letter, the prisoner demands that the tribes and notables of Iraq blow up Abu Ghurayb, since the occupation soldiers have violated the honor of the Iraqi women prisoners detained there. Iraqi newspapers, including those owned by political parties and individuals in the pay of the occupation, have reported that people living near Abu Ghurayb are moving away in fear that indeed it might be destroyed at any time. Khammas notes that most prisoners who are released from the place refuse to discuss what they were subjected to during their ordeal inside, out of fear of being returned to prison yet again. What Shaykh Sharif al-Qubaysi, 72 was subjected to in Abu Ghurayb is something that would be unlikely to occur even in the most dictatorial of countries. Although Shaykh al-Qubaysi had not joined the ranks of the Resistance and had not worked for the Iraqi government before the US invasion, he found himself in Abu Ghurayb after the US occupation forces raided his home. Shaykh al-Qubaysiâs advanced age was insufficient to get him appropriate treatment from the American jailers. One evening as he was sitting in his cell, an American woman soldier came in and ordered him to remove all his clothes. She insisted upon it despite his protestations, and then paraded him around in front of the inmates in the prison. Member of the Board of Muslim âUlamaâ, Dr. âAbd as-Salam al-Kubaysi, relates the story of one Imam of an Iraqi mosque. American women soldiers in the prison forced him to put on red womenâs underwear and they then locked him in a cell with 16 Iraqi women prisoners for three hours. Al-Kubaysi says that the Imam confided in him that âhe and the women wept incessantly for the entire three hours.â Journalistic photographer Sahib âUmran who was held in Abu Ghurayb for three months, describes the US treatment of Iraqis in the prison as âhumiliating and degrading.â âThey would allow us to bathe only once a month, and that was at four in the morning and in extremely cold water. The American occupation forces also prevent prisoners from going to toilets, just in order to humiliate them.â Sahib added, âwe wore red overalls like those that the prisoners in Guantánamo wear. And even when the weather was extremely cold, the air conditioners would be left running. Food was cold, to say nothing of being spoiled.â He said that the Americans would try to break the morale of the prisoners by claiming that they had killed or arrested members of the prisonerâs family. Arshad Fadl, 19, says that he was forced to stand on his feet for three consecutive days with his hands in chains and his head in a sack. Throughout this entire period, Fadl says, he was not allowed to drink water, to eat, or even to go to the toilet. âBut whatever kind of bad treatment I got, I was able to bear it. Only, I felt sorry for the elderly prisoners and the for the disabled who were with us in prison,â he said. US proconsul L. Paul Bremer announced that some non-Iraqi prisoners being held by the US occupation forces in Iraq might be transferred to the concentration camp set up by the Americans in Guantánamo, Cuba, according to a report carried by the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Qabas. Bremer claimed that the Iraqi prisoners, who he said numbered 7,000, are being held in Abu Ghurayb and Umm Qasr prisons and that among them are 11 women. Their cases, he said, would be reviewed after investigations have been completed. |
| Posted by:Mike Sylwester |