BAGHDAD, Iraq – Abdel Rahman remembers an American soldier pointing a gun at his head and groin. You’ve been found guilty of killing our troops and must die, he says the soldier told him. The soldier pulled the trigger. It was a stun gun. The electrical shock jolted through Rahman’s body. He fainted.
Said Salim talks of beatings as being routine. The soldier named “Barrera” was especially dedicated, Salim says, forcing him to the ground and stepping on his back while proclaiming: “I’m an American.”
Muwaffaq Arrawi was in detention for only two weeks. In that time, he says, his American guards rarely untied his hands or raised the heavy hood shrouding his head. They played loud music to prevent the prisoners from sleeping and subjected them to long hours of interrogation, then exhausting exercises, all designed, Arrawi believes, to debilitate their spirits.
The stories told by numerous Iraqi prisoners who have emerged from the U.S.-run jail system here paint a picture of harsh and often abusive treatment as guards and interrogators sought to “soften up” the men and women in their custody. Thousands of prisoners are being held without charges and for indefinite periods in an effort to gain information or simply to punish.
Well before photographs made public last week showed some of the more sadistic forms of treatment at the sprawling Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad, Iraqis have complained of what they said was systematic and extensive abuse.
While none of the stories recounted here can be independently verified, they are consistent with a 53-page investigative report by Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba that found “egregious acts and grave breaches of international” law at Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca, two of the largest facilities.
Rahman, the 37-year-old Iraqi who recounted the mock execution, said he was held for four months in at least three different detention centers. Most of his time was spent at the prison at Baghdad’s international airport, where, he said, the soldier pronounced his death sentence and fired electrical shocks into his body.
“I fell like a roll of toilet paper,” said Rahman, recounting how he collapsed in pain. He awoke to find himself in a prison infirmary, hooked up to an IV. “I realized they were not as intent on getting information as on humiliating us.”
In the Arab world, humiliation in its myriad forms is among the most egregious of abuses because of the way it strikes at dignity and manhood. For Iraqis, subjugating a man before his wife, using a foot or boot to strike a man, or in any way compromising a man’s sexuality or a woman’s modesty – these are the most unforgivable of transgressions.
Salim, the man who remembered his main tormenter as “Barerra,” was captured by U.S. troops as he attempted to leave the country in the early days of the invasion last year. He said he was transferred from one detention center to another, first at a remote location in the desert and ending up at the Bucca camp near Umm Qasr in southern Iraq.
Salim was released on March 7.
Days earlier, Arrawi said, he was seized in a midnight raid on his Baghdad home along with his father, three brothers and a brother-in-law.
In the raid, a soldier landed his rifle butt just above Arrawi’s left eye, he said. It required stitches and his eyes were black and blue for days. He and his father, Sammi, have reddish puncture marks on their wrists where they say the cuffs cut into the flesh for the duration of their detention.
Sammi Arrawi was a brigadier general in Hussein’s army. He went against Hussein in 1989, criticizing the Iraq-Iran war, and ended up in prison for 13 months, he said. He has papers indicating he was vetted early in the occupation by U.S. authorities and not seen as a threat.
For the next days after their arrest, father and sons were held in the airport detention center. The only times the hoods were lifted from their eyes were during grueling interrogation sessions or to eat. Their hands were never unbound.
Sammi Arrawi was held only for a few days. But in that time, he said, the American guards forced him to stand, hooded, on one leg with his arms extended straight up for hours on end. “It’s psychological warfare,” he said. “They want to humiliate you and exhaust you to the biggest degree.”
Rahman, meanwhile, was released last October. He was part of a group of 45 Iraqis who the Americans deposited on a street in central Baghdad. They emerged from the bus that carried them, scruffy with long beards and filthy clothing.
He quickly began to denounce his abuse, but few listened. The publication of the notorious Abu Ghraib photos and the scandal that has followed has given him and Iraqi human rights activists new impetus for pursing their cause.
“At first I was not able to speak as easily,” Rahman said. “I feel more free now. It is a good opportunity.”
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