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<font size=3><br>
</font><font face="arial" size=5>Iraqis Say More Abuse in Other Prisons
by U.S. Military <br>
</font><font face="arial" size=1><a href="http://www.aljazeerah.info/News%20archives/2004%20News%20archives/May/4%20n/Iraqis%20Say%20More%20Abuse%20in%20Other%20Prisons%20by%20U.S.%20Military.htm" eudora="autourl">http://www.aljazeerah.info/News%20archives/2004%20News%20archives/May/4%20n/Iraqis%20Say%20More%20Abuse%20in%20Other%20Prisons%20by%20U.S.%20Military.htm<br><br>
</a></font><font face="arial" size=3>Tue May 4, 2004 10:27 AM ET
<br><br>
By Ghaith Abdul-Ahad <br><br>
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. <br><br>
<b>"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,</b> said as he pointed at the notorious Abu Ghraib
jail on the outskirts of Baghdad. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
"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. <br><br>
On the flat scrubland outside Abu Ghraib, dozens of men and women now
gather each day hoping for news of relatives seized by America.
<br><br>
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. <br><br>
President Bush told his defense secretary on Monday to take "strong
actions" against those responsible and find out if the problem was
more widespread. <br><br>
</font><font face="arial" size=4>OTHER PRISONS WORSE, IRAQIS
SAY</font><font face="arial" size=3> <br><br>
Some Iraqis say Abu Ghraib is something of a sanctuary compared with what
happens in other U.S.-run prisons around the country. <br><br>
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.
<br><br>
<b>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
</font><font face="arial" size=3 color="#FF0000">electrical wires
attached to his
</font><font face="arial" size=3 color="#0000FF">penis.</b></font><font face="arial" size=3 color="#FF0000">
<br><br>
</font><font face="arial" size=3><b>"We were beaten, deprived of
sleep and humiliated," he said. <br><br>
</b>"If you ever talked to the prisoner next to you, <b>you would
have to do push-ups with a soldier standing on your back</b>.
</font><font face="arial" size=3 color="#0000FF"><b>They made us stand
naked and then a soldier would come beat us with a
stick</b></font><font face="arial" size=3> <b>and sometimes
</font><font face="arial" size=3 color="#FF0000">sodomize</font><font face="arial" size=3>
us with the stick," he said. <br><br>
</b>Talking of his brothers inside Abu Ghraib, he added: <br><br>
"It's good they are detained here, this palace is the prison of
mercy compared to the place I was detained in." <br><br>
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. <br><br>
"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. <br><br>
"But it's not a closed book by any means. If further investigations
are needed, they will happen." <br><br>
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. <br><br>
<b>"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. <br><br>
</b></font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
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