I decided to re-post this diary given the intensity of the discussion about torture on Kos. However, I think it is important to add some comments first. I am rather new to Kos and have never re-posted so I apologize in advance for any breach of protocol etc....
My brother-in-law was tortured under the Al-Jaafari regime by thugs from the infamous Iraqi Ministry of the Interior. He told us about his ordeal before over 170 tortured and starved detainees were found in the bowels of the Ministry building. The discovery of these detainees was met with outrage by the media and U.S. government officials at the highest levels including Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
...Pace said at a news conference Nov. 29 with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, "It is absolutely the responsibility of every U.S. service member, if they see inhumane treatment being conducted, to intervene to stop it." Turning to Pace, Rumsfeld responded: "I don't think you mean they have an obligation to physically stop it; it's to report it."
"If they are physically present when inhumane treatment is taking place, sir, they have an obligation to try to stop it," Pace answered. '
Classic Rumsfeld.
In the same Washington Post article Maj. Gen. John D. Gardner, the commander of U.S. detention operations in Iraq talks in high-minded terms about U.S. goals:
U.S. efforts to eliminate torture in Iraq's prisons and detention centers include training Iraqi corrections officers, increasing capacity at detention centers and training Iraqi security forces on the rights and care of detainees, Gardner said.
Because, of course, the backward Iraqis don't know the difference between human treatment and inhumane treatment like we do.
The Christian Science Monitor ran an article describing the difficulty of eradicating torture in Iraq. Blame is placed squarely upon the government of Iraq, At the time, no one in the worldwide press pulled their punches regarding the problem and who was to blame. In general, the coverage in the Western media underscored the view that democratic reform and Western style freedom would help tame the inherent violence and tribalism of the region.
When US troops raided the facility Sunday night, they expected to find at most 40 detainees, not 173 sickly men and boys, all Sunni Arabs. Iraqi officials have since confirmed that torture implements were also found there.
The revelation of torture of detainees at a secret interrogation center in Baghdad is likely to prove the tip of the iceberg if investigations are widened to look at the overall practices of Iraq's security services, human rights advocates and some Iraqi politicians say.
But coming to grips with the problem will be difficult.
While Prime Minister Ibrahim al- Jaafari has promised that torture at the facility will be investigated and the perpetrators punished, the Interior Ministry, which controls the police and elite units like the Wolf and Volcano brigades, has been the target of widespread abuse allegations for more than a year.
Its paramilitaries largely draw from the members of Shiite militias like the Badr Brigade, which was formed and trained in Iran as opponents of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated regime, and their members have become deeply embedded in the ministry.
A real effort to clean out the ministry, say human rights workers and Sunni politicians, would require dismissals and arrests that seem unlikely given the country's sectarian war.
"I hold the view that this case is in no way an anomaly,'' says Sarah Leah Whitson, the director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East division. "I wouldn't be surprised if there were many other illegal detention centers either controlled by the Interior ministry or their unofficial agents, both in Baghdad and elsewhere."
Ms. Whitson says abuse in Iraq is "an institutional problem" and her organization warned of the use of torture at the Interior Ministry in January of this year. Those charges, as now, prompted Prime Minister Jaafari and others to promise comprehensive action would be taken.
"It is leadership that determines whether or not torture takes place, whether people get fired or go on trial,'' says Whitson, adding she isn't aware of any recent arrests or dismissals of interior ministry officials for abuse. "The Iraqi leadership is responsible and they've failed."
Our leaders, sitting in the White House met and deliberated on how to torture detainees. They used our system of justice to re-write the law so that torture could be implemented without any consequences. Yet, our politicians still act as though America has the moral right to expect better from a devastated, shattered Iraq? Have we no shame?
The leaders in this government are mass murders and torturers. They are every bit as blood-thirty, monomaniacal , greedy and vicious as Saddam Hussein. It is that simple. I have heard people say time and time again "why don't people in dictatorships rise up and rid themselves of their oppressor?" They don't rise up because they are afraid for their lives, for the lives of their children or because some of them actually believe in that dictator and reap benefits by supporting him.
Don't we have a Democracy? Aren't these leaders supposed to be working for us? When we know absolutely that our elected officials are murderers, torturers and war profiteers , what the hell is our excuse? I am as guilty as the next person. I really don't know what to do but, my God, how can we let this hypocrites and criminals continue their depravity one more day?
Below is my original post:
Remember a while back when we were just starting to hear about the horrors being perpetrated upon prisoners in the Iraqi Ministry of The Interior ? Well, about a month before any of that news broke here my brother-in-law, "Ayad", (who is married to my husband's sister) went missing. My husband's family didn't tell us anything about it at the time because they didn't want to upset us. It always amazed me that no matter what horrors they were suffering, his family was reluctant to share their experiences with us because they were trying to shield us from getting too worried. They were so protective, as though we- sitting here safely in America- were too fragile to know the truth. We only found out about what "Ayad" went through "after he resurfaced.
My husband wrote down this story as "Ayad" told it to us. It is a terrible and pointed example about the realities of eliciting "confessions" through torture. The account is translated from Arabic.
Exactly at four o’clock in the afternoon my brother, my cousin and I headed to a restaurant in our area in Gaziliayah where I live with my family near Al-Khadra. After we ate a quick meal, we started to drive back to the house but on the way a police car blocked us. The patrol officer said that he wanted to search our vehicle and us. We answered him cordially and everything seemed fine but after a few minutes the policeman got on his “lasilkie” (walkie-talkie) and said the following:
"Four individuals are riding in a black Mercedes sedan with tinted windows without a license plate. They are trying to initiate a terrorist attack near the house of the son of the Minister of the Interior"
Huh? First of all, there were only three of us not four, the car’s color was blue, not black, the glass was clear not tinted, the car had a license plate and was completely legal and we were not armed. Of course, we were surprised by what the policeman had said. When we tried to talk to him about why he was saying these things he answered us in very harsh, hostile words.
"Come on, move it. We’re going to the police station." And so we went with him hoping we’d be able to explain to someone that there had been a mistake.
At the gates of the police station there was an American patrol. We tried to get their help and with great difficulty I tried to explain in English what had happened. The American officer answered me back kindly and said, "I’m sorry, I can’t help you because this situation is not our jurisdiction, it’s for the Iraqi police to handle." I thanked him for at least listening to me. Then, at this point the Iraqi policeman who had detained us got a call on his "lasilkie" telling him to bring us to the Interior Ministry. We were amazed, wondering what was going to happen to us. So, we went with the policeman to the Interior Ministry building hoping again that there we would get better answers and better treatment. By then it was 6:30 pm.
When we arrived inside the Ministry building we were met by a group of officers who said disgusting things to us. They cursed and kicked us. We had no idea why they did it. They led us to the interrogation room inside the main building on one of the floors, I thought it was the sixth or seventh floor, but I wasn’t sure because by this time we were blindfolded. When we entered the room the interrogator ordered the others to untie our blindfolds. He got up to meet us kindly.
"Did anyone bother you?" he asked.
"Yes," we said.
"Who were they? Could you recognize them?"
"Yes," we said. "We’d recognize all of them." He immediately ordered the policeman to take one of us to identify the ones who had mistreated us.
I went with the policeman but I didn’t find anyone who had hit us only some guards at the gate. The policeman who accompanied me asked the guards which men had beaten us. They said, "We don’t know any of them. They’re officers from the inside of the building and we don’t even know their names." The policeman and I went back after we couldn’t find any of the suspects. This time, since I wasn’t wearing the blindfold I could see that we were on the sixth floor.
When we went back into the interrogation room the interrogator asked if we had found the culprits. The policeman told him that no one was around from the officers who had mistreated us and no one from the gate guards knew who had done it. The interrogator promised us that he would conduct an investigation to find out who had beaten us and they would be punished. By then, it was about 7:30 pm. The interrogator informed us that we’d be released after he took our statement. He wrote down our account of the events, we signed and he ordered the policeman who arrested us to take us back and return us to our home. The interrogator reprimanded the policeman and insisted that he write a detailed report of why he had arrested us. Until then, things looked promising but what happened after that was a nightmare.
Suddenly, a mob of fifteen men in civilian clothes stormed into the room and started slapping the interrogator. They beat us, tied our hands, blindfolded us again and led us to an unknown place. They put us in cars which only drove for about 2 minutes, and my guess is that it we were still at the same Interior Ministry building.
Here began the real torture. We were thrown on the freezing cold ground and just left there without any explanation until about two in the morning. Then a group of officers came and led us to a cell and threw us in. There we really experienced horror; I wouldn’t wish anyone to experience it. The tiny cell was extremely dark plus our eyes were blindfolded. There was no opening for air. There were many people inside, about twenty-five of them, lying on the floor on top of each other in any spot they could find. There was nothing to cover yourself with. But anyway, I could only see this a little as I snuck a peek from under my blindfold. And by the way, we were still tied up. We were not allowed to take off our blindfolds because the guard came once in a while to check on us. One of the prisoners told us that he had once slipped off his blindfold and had seen things he’d never imagined.
The first day went by without any food or water or rest. We were dying, listening for the footsteps of the guard to come by , hoping that he was going to bring us food, water, a blanket or maybe help us untie our arms. Every once in a while a guard came and took someone out of the cell and brought them back a few hours later. Every time someone came back they were bleeding all over their body. Either they were bleeding or they were passed out from the torture or they came back screaming hysterically. The first day they tortured five prisoners from our cell and it seemed like there was another cell or even more nearby because all day long we heard screams and moaning and we didn’t know whether they were torturing or killing people.
The first day went by and our arms were still tied but now blood was dripping from the handcuffs. At noon, a guard came and untied a group of prisoners, and an hour later the guard returned. He opened a little window in the cell door and said: “I brought you lunch.” He ordered the ones who were untied to feed the ones who were still tied up. Then he poured a small can of ful (fava beans) on the floor. One small can of fava beans. In your opinion, do you think that would be enough to feed 25 people? He poured it on the floor. The floor was disgusting because it was not tiled. It was a dirt floor. So anyway, each of us ended up getting about four beans. I discovered that this was the food they gave you every two days. Our bathroom was simply an oil can in the corner of the cell or the corner of the cell itself.
On the third day, they prevented my brother, my cousin and me from using the bathroom at all and it was the worst day. In the morning the guard came and took us and after one hour of interrogation they began to torture us to get us to confess to the crimes of killing and bombing. We were innocent. We had not done these things. They became very vicious because we refused to confess, so they began to torture us more: the real torture.
They electrocuted us. They beat us with canes, electric cables and water hoses. They broke whiskey bottles on our heads. They took us outside and tied our feet with ropes, then they tied our hands to a car and drove over rough asphalt, dragging us behind. After two hours we still insisted that we were innocent and would not confess, so the torture continued. They brought us back to the cell and things went on this way until the seventh day.
Finally, we couldn’t take it anymore and we confessed to the unknown crimes so they would stop torturing us. On the ninth day, they finally untied our arms and our blindfolds but we were still in the same cell. The amount of food increased a little. Every four prisoners got one meal a day: it was basically a piece of bread not enough for a child. Anyway, they let us use the bathroom once every two days. This continued for 28 days.
They finally moved us to a courthouse to be tried for the crimes we had confessed to under torture. They said if we objected we would get the same treatment but ten times worse than we’d experienced so far. But as soon as we were in front of the judge we objected. We told him the entire story and insisted that we had not committed any of those crimes. Since there wasn’t any evidence to convict us, the judge decided to look further into the matter. The judge had the policeman who had arrested us subpoenaed and asked his bailiff to bring him to the courthouse. Two hours later, the policeman showed up and the judge asked him if we had committed any of the crimes of which we’d been accused. The policeman said: “No, Your Honor. They were simply suspects who fit the description of the people who committed the attack and they were suspicious because they were in the area where the Minister of Interior’s son lives but I couldn’t find anything on them.” The judge became furious about what had happened to us because we had been tortured and might have been killed due to the false arrest. When the judge confronted him, the policeman didn’t seem to care so the judge immediately ordered him to be put in jail for four months. Then he ordered our release.
There are too many of these stories for each prisoner. One prisoner was forced to confess to the murder of ten people, a crime he hadn’t committed. In the interrogation they wanted to know the names of the dead so he came up with ten names off the top of his head of friends and relatives who were still alive.
This is the situation in Iraq but it’s a million times worse. I can collect all these stories and all these incidents that have happened. Stories of the past and stories of the present that are still going on.
The worst part of our story is that our family thought that we had been kidnapped, but when no one called they thought we were dead and thrown in one of the streets. They searched all the hospitals, viewed dead bodies in refrigerators and in unmarked cemeteries. Some of the mosques bury the bodies of those who are dumped on the road or in abandoned places. They take their pictures so maybe someone could identify them one day.
They say if you are a Muslim Sunni, you kill. If you are a Muslim Shiite, you kill. If you are Christian, you kill. If you are of any other religion or nationality, you kill. And the killers are unknown. They say it’s the police, others say the guards. They say Badr forces, they say Americans, they say insurgents, they say terrorists...each person has a different story.
My husband's entire family were "fortunate". They were finally able to flee Iraq and are now refugees living in Egypt. "Ayad" and my husband's sister just had a little boy.