CPTnet
May 12, 2004
IRAQ: Released detainees describe torture in prison camps at Baghdad press
conference
by Le Anne Clausen
Dozens of former detainees and their families came forward Sunday, May 9, to
tell their experiences of physical, sexual, and psychological torture at
the hands of U.S. soldiers in Iraqi prison camps. The press conference in
Baghdad was organized by several Iraqi and international human rights
organizations, including CPT, which 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."
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 American woman shown in many of the
photographs as one who carried out the torture he experienced.
The man 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 said
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, 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?"
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