[News] Iraqis Say More Abuse in Other Prisons by U.S. Military

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Tue May 4 20:16:44 EDT 2004


Iraqis Say More Abuse in Other Prisons by U.S. Military
http://www.aljazeerah.info/News%20archives/2004%20News%20archives/May/4%20n/Iraqis%20Say%20More%20Abuse%20in%20Other%20Prisons%20by%20U.S.%20Military.htm

Tue May 4, 2004 10:27 AM ET

By Ghaith Abdul-Ahad

ABU GHRAIB, Iraq (Reuters) - With six U.S. soldiers reprimanded and six 
others facing criminal charges, Iraq's prisoner-abuse scandal looked far 
from over Tuesday as more Iraqis came forward to allege maltreatment by 
U.S. troops.

"If the Americans ever come back to detain me I will commit suicide before 
I am taken to this place again," Sha'aban al-Janabi, a former prisoner, 
said as he pointed at the notorious Abu Ghraib jail on the outskirts of 
Baghdad.

Janabi, seized last December near Falluja and accused of participating in 
attacks on U.S. forces, says he was beaten frequently during the 25 days he 
spent inside Abu Ghraib before being set free in farmland on the outskirts 
of Falluja.

"I was blindfolded and handcuffed, we were dumped outside on a gravel yard 
for 10 days, we were given one bottle of water all day for cleaning and 
drinking," he said on returning to the jail to look for relatives who were 
arrested with him but are still being held.

On the flat scrubland outside Abu Ghraib, dozens of men and women now 
gather each day hoping for news of relatives seized by America.

Reports of alleged prisoner abuse inside, first broadcast on U.S. 
television and later around the world, have reached them too, as have 
pictures of naked men piled on each other in front of laughing captors and 
of a hooded man with wires attached.

President Bush told his defense secretary on Monday to take "strong 
actions" against those responsible and find out if the problem was more 
widespread.

OTHER PRISONS WORSE, IRAQIS SAY

Some Iraqis say Abu Ghraib is something of a sanctuary compared with what 
happens in other U.S.-run prisons around the country.

Abdullah al-Dulaimi, who was standing outside Abu Ghraib trying to get 
information about two brothers detained there, said he had been held in a 
detention center near the border with Syria for a month in January.

He says he was once put in something called the "coffin," a wooden box too 
short to stand up in, for two days. He says he was also frequently beaten 
and had electrical wires attached to his penis.

"We were beaten, deprived of sleep and humiliated," he said.

"If you ever talked to the prisoner next to you, you would have to do 
push-ups with a soldier standing on your back. They made us stand naked and 
then a soldier would come beat us with a stick and sometimes sodomize us 
with the stick," he said.

Talking of his brothers inside Abu Ghraib, he added:

"It's good they are detained here, this palace is the prison of mercy 
compared to the place I was detained in."

The U.S. military said it could not rule out opening further investigations 
into prisoner abuse in Iraq in the future if credible claims by former and 
current prisoners were raised.

"At the moment we have six officers who've been reprimanded and six more 
who face a court-martial and we're going to get to the bottom of those 
investigations," said Lieutenant-Colonel Dan Williams, a U.S. army 
spokesman in Baghdad.

"But it's not a closed book by any means. If further investigations are 
needed, they will happen."

Despite such assurances, relatives at Abu Ghraib remained concerned for 
family members being held inside, fearing that some of the same abuses 
might have been carried out on them.

"They arrested my son six months ago. I have been coming here almost every 
day and I haven't seen him yet," said Jasim Khalaf Abid, a farmer in his 
sixties from the town of Balad, about 50 miles north of Baghdad.


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