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Ex-Iraqi Prisoners Say ‘Humiliated’ By U.S. Jailers
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A U.S. soldier surveys a group of bound Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in this undated photo |
WASHINGTON,
May 3 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Placed in shipping
containers used to house dogs, buried up to their necks in the sand,
provided with only a liter of water a week, thrown on the floor with
their hands and feet tied together and last but not least stripped
naked before their occupiers are too few to mention counts by former
Iraqi prisoners.
The
counts and the release of bombshell pictures of U.S. troops sexually
abusing Iraqi prisoners have, in effect, reinforced the long-held view
in occupied Iraq that the U.S. occupation is intent on humiliating the
Iraqi people, commented the Washington Post Monday, May 3.
“The
system has been rife with complaints for months, but now the testimony
of former Iraqi prisoners claiming abuse at the hands of U.S. jailers
has gained new credibility while further damaging the reputation of
the U.S. occupation authority,” the mass-circulation paper said.
In
exclusive interviews with two former Iraqi prisoners jailed by U.S.
troops in several detention camps across the country, the daily said
that lengthy interrogation sessions, employing sleep depravation,
severe isolation, fear, humiliation and physical duress, were regular
features of their daily regimen.
“I
was urinating blood because my kidney had been injured by the
beatings,” Saif Mahmmoud Shakir, a 26-year-old taxi driver detained
in July, told the Post.
He
said he served most of his time in Umm Qasr, Iraq's southern port,
where the occupation authority assembled a vast prison camp out of
tents.
On
three occasions following extended sessions of interrorgation, Shakir
added, he and his twin brother were taken in Humvees into the desert
north of the port, where they were buried up to their necks in the
sand.
The
two moved from prison to prison together for months, the paper said.
“I
couldn't see my brother,” he said. “Then I heard shots fired. They
came back and told me my brother was dead.”
Furthermore,
Shakir said he was shot by a rubber bullet used by the American guards
after 9 p.m., even at prisoners who use the bathroom. He has two dark,
dime-size scars on his right biceps, according to the U.S. daily.
‘Naked
To A Chair’
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Scores of Iraqis demonstrate before Abu Gharib prison against the maltreatment of Iraqi prisoners |
Abdullah
Mohammed Abdulrazzaq, another 19-year-old former prisoner, described
to the daily how (he) was tied naked to a chair and collapsed because
of the physical stress and lack of food and water.
U.S.
soldiers came in and out of the room, he said, adding that he saw
their boots from beneath his blindfold and heard them speaking
English.
He
also said one of the interrogators wore the uniform of a Kuwaiti army
captain.
For
three days, he said, the Kuwaiti man tortured him using electricity.
“I
told the American soldier when I arrived to do something for me, and
punish this Kuwaiti soldier,” he said. "He told me, 'I can't do
anything against him. And you are going to find the same treatment
here.'”
Abdulrazzaq
was taken to the now-also-notorious Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad,
where he spent the worst days of his life with 40 other prisoners.
He
told the paper about how the showers were available once a week when
Army water tankers pulled up in front of portable bathrooms, how a
liter of water was expected to last each prisoner a week, let alone
one meal a day.
He
also said that prisoners were placed in shipping containers used to
house the prison dogs.
“The
smell inside was horrible, and detention there would last days,” he
added.
He
was eventually, after spending six months in several prisons around
the country, taken to Baghdad International Airport on a stretcher.
Saddam’s
Torture ‘Better’
Dhia
al-Shweiri, a third prisoner, preferred the torture of ousted Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein to the humiliation of being stripped naked by
the American troops.
Shweiri,
a Shiite accused by the American of belonging to Mahdi Army of leader
Moqtada Sadr, said under Saddam’s regime he was electrocuted and
beaten.
“But
that's better than the humiliation of being stripped naked…Shoot
me…but don’t do this to us,” he told The Associated Press news
agency.
Shweiri,
who was arrested by the Americans in October, said he and six other
prisoners were asked to take off his clothes and asked them to face
the wall and bend over a little.
“They
made us stand in a way that I am ashamed to describe. They came to
look at us as we stood there. They knew this would humiliate us,” he
told the American news agency.
He
went on: “They were trying to humiliate us, break our pride. We are
men. It's OK if they beat me. Beatings don't hurt us, it's just a
blow. But no one would want their manhood to be shattered”.
Shweiri
said he now came to realize that the Americans were not “liberators
but occupiers”.
He
said now his hatred for Saddam was replaced with one for the United
States. When al-Shweiri left American detention, he said his hatred
for Saddam was the young man now joined the fighters and supporters of
anti-occupation firebrand Sadr, regarded by the Americans as an “outlaw”
after leading a Shiite uprising to kick them out of his country.
“If
Seyed Moqtada orders us to disband, we will. If he orders us to die,
we will die. And if he tells us to live, we will live. We have nothing
to do with the Americans and what they demand from us,” he said.
He
said that he is not surprised at all to see the horrific pictures of
torturing and sexually abusing his fellow prisoners at the hands of
the Americans.
On
Friday, April 30, U.S. network CBS dropped a bombshell, broadcasting
the pictures of U.S. troops sexually abusing and torturing Iraqi
prisoners.
One
of the shocking
pictures showed a hooded prisoner with wires attached to his
hands, standing on a box. CBS said he had been told that if he fell
off, he would be electrocuted.
The
American misconduct coupled with a British one. On Saturday, May 1,
Britain's Daily Mirror newspaper splashed a front-page picture of a
British soldier apparently urinating on a hooded Iraqi prisoner.
The
newspaper said it had been given the pictures by serving soldiers from
the Queen's Lancashire Regiment.
Amnesty
International said it has uncovered a “pattern of torture”' of
Iraqi prisoners by occupation troops, and called for an independent
investigation into the claims of abuse.
The
U.S. New Yorker magazine revealed on Sunday that the horrific pictures
were part of a new episode of “sadistic,
blatant, and wanton criminal abuses” at Abu Ghraib.
“How
can we not hate the Americans after the treatment we have received?”
Wondered Abdulrazzaq.
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