Was Abu Ghraib merely the tip of the iceberg?

CAIRO , September 15 (IslamOnline.net) – American soldiers have routinely abused detainees in northern Iraq , in what seems to be a new widespread and systematic abuse similar to that in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, a leading British daily said.

The Guardian Tuesday, September 14, carried testimonies of a number of detainees who complained about having been sexually and physically abused while detained by the American forces in Mosul .

Though the abuse of detainees at the Abu Ghraib jail and in Basra has been well-documented, this is the first time reports of abuse have been made from the north of the country.

“I was handcuffed and hooded and was then taken to an unknown place which they call 'the disco', where they played very loud music as one of their means of torture,” said Haitham Saeed Al-Mallah, an Iraqi detainee was quoted by the British daily.

Al-Mallah was detained by the US forces during a raid on his house.

“They left me standing for hours, handcuffed and hooded, which made me quite disorientated. Then I was kicked very hard on my stomach, which was followed by continuous beating with a stick and with their boots until I fell unconscious.

“I only woke up after they poured over my head very cold water, which caused me great suffering.”

Mallah further said he saw a 14-year old Kurdish boy bleeding from his anus as he was subject to sexual assaults by the US soldiers.

“He was Kurdish and his name was Hama . I heard the soldiers talking to each other about this guy, they mentioned that the reason for this bleeding was inserting a metal object in his anus.”

“Group Torture”

Mallah added he was later taken to a place were there was a "group torture" of detainees.

“I heard nothing but screaming and suffering of detained Iraqis. The usage of cold water along with beating seemed to be a standard procedure. We were then asked to perform exhausting exercises of squatting while they were playing extremely loud (and dirty) music.

“Whoever fell to the ground out of exhaustion would receive painful beating and cold water. We were prevented from going to the toilets despite our pleas, which made many of us soil ourselves.”

Mallah said detainees were allowed to sleep for about two hours, after which the cycle of torture continued.

“The new thing this time was ordering us to shout, ‘Long live the United States ’. We were also made to shout obscenities (sentences that had the word ‘fuck’ in them).”

Loud Music Sequence

Another Iraqi detainee, a lawyer who was abused by the US forces in Mosul , said he was tortured only for his efforts to investigate reports of abuses of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers.

“For the next 15 hours they tried to break me down by taking me frequently inside and repeating the stripping, cold water and loud music sequence,” Yasir Rubaii Saeed al-Qutaji said.

The Iraqi lawyer says he was hooded and stripped naked in a building known as the “disco”.

Al-Qutaji, who says he was a founder member of the Islamic Organization for Human Rights, describes how loud western music was played and cold water poured over his body.

He said he was even threatened with sexual abuse.

“Due to the very loud music,” he adds, “they would talk to me via a loudspeaker that was placed next to my ears.”

The beatings did not leave a mark on his body because his attackers wore special gloves, he said in the statement carried by the Guardian.

Burnt With Fire

Al-Qutaji said other detainees were treated even worse.

“Some were burnt with fire, others [had] bandaged broken arms.”

Al-Qutaji said he and other Iraqi lawyers have been unable to stop abuses because US forces have been given immunity from prosecution.

The Guardian said Phil Shiner, of the Birmingham-based law firm Public Interest Lawyers, is trying to get the cases raised in the British courts. He is working with American lawyers to get them raised there.

“The British public needs to know the full implications of the decision to get into this war,” he said.

A US army spokesman in Baghdad said Tuesday that he was surprised by the allegations, which would be investigated.

The report came a few days after the first US military intelligence soldier was handed down eight-month sentence on September 11, over the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal.

The abuses at Abu Ghraib caused outrage around the world when several graphic photos of Iraqi detainees tortured and sexually abused by American soldiers at the infamous prison were made public.

Since then, the scandal has been deepening, exposing more elements and factors about interrogation techniques approved by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who has been under domestic and international pressure to step down.

On August, US Army Private Lynndie England , who made her presence in most of the Iraqi abuse photos, said she was making abuses against Iraqi prisoners under orders from her superiors.

In one startling image, England was pictured holding a leash attached to the neck of a naked detainee who was sprawling on the floor of a cell block.

Seven US soldiers had been charged for abusing Iraqi detainees at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison.

Jeremy C. Sivits, pleaded guilty to four counts of abuse at his court-martial in May. He was sentenced to a year in prison, reduction in rank and a bad conduct discharge.