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Get Ready for a Lot More Horror Stories About Interrogations
.... Muwafaq Sami Abbas, a lawyer by training ... was seized from his bed by U.S. troops in the middle of the night, he said, along with the rest of the men in his house, and taken to a prison on the airport grounds. The black sack the troops placed over his head was removed only briefly during the next nine days of interrogation, conducted by U.S. officials in civilian and military clothes, he said. He was forced to do knee bends until he collapsed, he recalled, and black marks still ring his wrists from the pinch of plastic handcuffs. Rest was made impossible by loudspeakers blaring, over and over, the Beastie Boysâ rap anthem, "No Sleep Till Brooklyn." The forced exercise was even harder for his 57-year-old father, a former army general who held a signed certificate from the U.S. occupation authority vouching for his "high level of cooperation and assistance" in the days after the war. .... Interviews with former Iraqi prisoners and human-rights advocates present a picture of the U.S. prison system here as a vast wartime effort to extract information from the enemy rather than to punish criminals. Former prisoners say lengthy interrogation sessions, employing sleep depravation, severe isolation, fear, humiliation and physical duress, were regular features of their daily regimen and remain so for the estimated 2,500 to 7,000 people inside the jails. The system comprises 16 prisons, four of which hold prisoners accused of being part of the anti-occupation insurgency. But there are countless other holding cells on U.S. bases, many once used by former president Saddam Husseinâs government, where young Iraqis spend their first fearful hours in captivity. .... Abdullah Mohammed Abdulrazzaq, an unemployed 19-year-old, was held for six months in several prisons around Iraq. .... His interrogators -- first U.S. soldiers, then a man who he said wore the uniform of a Kuwaiti army captain -- sought information on the location of weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein and the insurgents in his neighborhood. For the next three days, he said, the Kuwaiti man tortured him using electricity. U.S. soldiers came in and out of the room where he was tied naked to a chair, he said, adding that he saw their boots from beneath his blindfold and heard them speaking English. He collapsed because of the physical stress and lack of food and water. He was eventually taken to Baghdad International Airport on a stretcher. "I told the American soldier when I arrived to do something for me, and punish this Kuwait soldier," he said. "He told me, âI canât do anything against him. And you are going to find the same treatment here.â" ..... Saif Mahmoud Shakir, a 26-year-old taxi driver, always carries the papers he received on his March release from Abu Ghraib. He said he was taken from his house in July, accused of participating in the insurgency and threatening to kill a translator working for the Americans. The man owed him $60, he said, and was trying to avoid repaying the loan by lying about him to U.S. troops eager to hunt down the insurgents. .... His first stop was another U.S. base in Adhamiya. There, he said, he was beaten by his interrogators before being taken to a special section of the airport prison where he said he was held along with senior members of Husseinâs government. "I arrived there and I was urinating blood because my kidney had been injured by the beatings," he said. "The doctor was very sympathetic and gave me medicine and fruit." Shakir, whose gaunt cheeks are covered by a thin beard, said U.S. interrogators used his relationship with his brother to try to extract a confession. On three occasions following extended sessions, he said, they were taken in Humvees into the desert north of the port. There, he said, they were buried up to their necks in the sand. .... the interrogators sometimes fired near his head to frighten him. .... Posted by: Mike Sylwester 2004-05-03 |
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