Release: Prisoners tell their stories of abuse

Released Detainees Tell Public of Torture, Mistreatment by U.S. Soldiers
By Le Anne Clausen
May 10, 2004

BAGHDAD—Dozens of former detainees and their families came forward Sunday to
tell
their experiences of physical, sexual, and psychological torture at the hands of
U.S. soldiers in Iraqi prison camps. The press conference was organized jointly
by
several Iraqi and international human rights organizations who have been
documenting
violations against detainees and their families since last summer.

One man lifted his shirt to show the long scars across his back from a whipping
he
said he received from U.S. forces. He said, “They beat me…urinated on me…broke
my
arm…and raped me. When they stopped my truck at the checkpoint and searched it,
all
they found was an Islamic magazine. Now I am psychologically unstable.” The
man
was released April 24th. While he spoke, a female relative in the audience wept
and
called out, “Allahu Akbar,” (God is greater).

A fifty-year-old man in traditional dress who was in Abu Ghraib prison camp last
winter testified that U.S. soldiers herded detainees into a room in groups of
ten to
twenty men and stripped them naked. The soldiers ordered one detainee to rape
the
others. The soldiers then ordered half of the detainees to sit on the ground
and
engage in oral sex with the standing detainees. The man identified the woman
shown
in many of the photographs as one who carried out the torture he experienced.
The
man also described how soldiers gave the detainees two full Army ration meals
and
ordered them to eat the entire quantity of food within two minutes. He said
they
were similarly forced to consume three liters of water. The man also described
how
soldiers would form a ball of fabric and shove it into the detainees’ anuses.
After
this, soldiers would remove the ball and put it into the detainees’ mouths,
“covered
with filth.” He explained that soldiers also gagged them with rags soaked in
hot
peppers, and held their nostrils under a running water faucet.

“During Ramadan [November 2003], the detainees held a demonstration and the
soldiers
killed four men. I knew these men…until now, none of the bodies of these men
have
been returned to their families.”

“Still there was a younger man with me, very handsome. The soldiers stripped
him
naked…when he refused [sexual advances from the soldiers], they tortured him for
three days. A woman soldier blindfolded him and led him naked into the women’s
prison. He was there for twenty days, naked. He witnessed the sexual abuse of
the
women detainees by the U.S. guards.”

A third released detainee, in his mid-thirties, described starting his time in
Abu
Ghraib in a group of detainees standing naked outside for three days, without
sleep,
food, or being able to sit down. He testified that soldiers poured cold water on
the
detainees’ bodies during this time.

Yet another man said, “I spent five months in Abu Ghraib, and I witnessed abuse
similar to that in the pictures. Officer Meagan was one of those responsible.
The
soldiers left me naked on the ground with the dogs. They didn’t give me food or
water for three days. Later, the food was so bad I couldn’t eat it. We got one
small blanket in the winter. It wasn’t enough. They did not differentiate
between
women or men, old or young—they tortured all.”

He added, “If you ask any detainee why he is there, he will tell you, ‘I don’t
know,
they didn’t say. I was sleeping when they arrested me and brought me here.’”

Many families spoke of the destructive house raids in which U.S. soldiers
arrested
their relatives in the first place, taking women’s jewelry, purses, cash, and
family
documents. In several cases, families described how soldiers completely
destroyed
their homes and belongings. “My wife was holding tightly to her purse. They
ripped
it from her. They pulled so hard, I thought they would rip off her arm,” said
one
man. Another testified that U.S. soldiers raided and destroyed their home and
killed their fifteen-year-old son on February 23rd, in Abu Ghraib village near
the
prison camp. Two days later, soldiers returned to apologize for raiding the
wrong
house.

“I have one question,” she asked. “Is this the free democracy of the West?”