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<b>THE OTHER PRISONERS<br><br>
</b>By Luke Harding<br>
The Guardian U.K.<br>
Thursday 20 May 2004<br><br>
Most of the coverage of abuse at Abu Ghraib has focused on <br>
male detainees. But what of the five women held in the jail, <br>
and the scores elsewhere in Iraq?<br><br>
The scandal at Abu Ghraib prison was first exposed not by a <br>
digital photograph but by a letter. In December 2003, a woman <br>
prisoner inside the jail west of Baghdad managed to smuggle <br>
out a note. Its contents were so shocking that, at first, <br>
Amal Kadham Swadi and the other Iraqi women lawyers who had <br>
been trying to gain access to the US jail found them hard to <br>
believe. <br><br>
The note claimed that US guards had been raping women <br>
detainees, who were, and are, in a small minority at Abu <br>
Ghraib. Several of the women were now pregnant, it added. The <br>
women had been forced to strip naked in front of men, it <br>
said. The note urged the Iraqi resistance to bomb the jail to <br>
spare the women further shame. <br><br>
Late last year, Swadi, one of seven female lawyers now <br>
representing women detainees in Abu Ghraib, began to piece <br>
together a picture of systemic abuse and torture perpetrated <br>
by US guards against Iraqi women held in detention without <br>
charge. This was not only true of Abu Ghraib, she discovered, <br>
but was, as she put it, "happening all across Iraq". <br><br>
In November last year, Swadi visited a woman detainee at a <br>
US military base at al-Kharkh, a former police compound in <br>
Baghdad. "She was the only woman who would talk about her <br>
case. She was crying. She told us she had been raped," Swadi <br>
says. "Several American soldiers had raped her. She had tried <br>
to fight them off and they had hurt her arm. She showed us <br>
the stitches. She told us, 'We have daughters and husbands. <br>
For God's sake don't tell anyone about this.'" <br><br>
Astonishingly, the secret inquiry launched by the US <br>
military in January, headed by Major General Antonio Taguba, <br>
has confirmed that the letter smuggled out of Abu Ghraib by a <br>
woman known only as "Noor" was entirely and devastatingly
<br>
accurate. While most of the focus since the scandal broke <br>
three weeks ago has been on the abuse of men, and on their <br>
sexual humilation in front of US women soldiers, there is now <br>
incontrovertible proof that women detainees - who form a <br>
small but unknown proportion of the 40,000 people in US <br>
custody since last year's invasion - have also been abused. <br>
Nobody appears to know how many. But among the 1,800 digital <br>
photographs taken by US guards inside Abu Ghraib there are, <br>
according to Taguba's report, images of a US military <br>
policeman "having sex" with an Iraqi woman. <br><br>
Taguba discovered that guards have also videotaped and <br>
photographed naked female detainees. The Bush administration <br>
has refused to release other photographs of Iraqi women <br>
forced at gunpoint to bare their breasts (although it has <br>
shown them to Congress) - ostensibly to prevent attacks on US <br>
soldiers in Iraq, but in reality, one suspects, to prevent <br>
further domestic embarrassment. <br><br>
Earlier this month it emerged that an Iraqi woman in her <br>
70s had been harnessed and ridden like a donkey at Abu Ghraib <br>
and another coalition detention centre after being arrested <br>
last July. Labour MP Ann Clwyd, who investigated the case and <br>
found it to be true, said, "She was held for about six weeks <br>
without charge. During that time she was insulted and told <br>
she was a donkey." <br><br>
In Iraq, the existence of photographs of women detainees <br>
being abused has provoked revulsion and outrage, but little <br>
surprise. Some of the women involved may since have <br>
disappeared, according to human rights activists. Professor <br>
Huda Shaker al-Nuaimi, a political scientist at Baghdad <br>
University who is researching the subject for Amnesty <br>
International, says she thinks "Noor" is now dead. "We
<br>
believe she was raped and that she was pregnant by a US <br>
guard. After her release from Abu Ghraib, I went to her <br>
house. The neighbours said her family had moved away. I <br>
believe she has been killed." <br><br>
Honor killings are not unusual in Islamic society, where <br>
rape is often equated with shame and where the stigma of <br>
being raped by an American soldier would, according to one <br>
Islamic cleric, be "unbearable". The prospects for rape <br>
victims in Iraq are grave; it is hardly surprising that no <br>
women have so far come forward to talk about their <br>
experiences in US-run jails where abuse was rife until early <br>
January. <br><br>
One of the most depressing aspects of the saga is that, <br>
unaccountably, the US military continues to hold five women <br>
in solitary confinement at Abu Ghraib, in cells 2.5m (8ft) <br>
long by 1.5m (5ft) wide. Last week, the military escorted a <br>
small group of journalists around the camp, where hundreds of <br>
relatives gather every day in a dusty car park in the hope of <br>
news. <br><br>
The prison is protected by guard towers, an outer fence <br>
topped with razor wire, and blast walls. Inside, more than <br>
3,000 Iraqi men are kept in vast open courtyards, in communal <br>
brown tents exposed to dust and sun. (Last month, nearly 30 <br>
detainees were killed in two separate mortar attacks on the <br>
prison; about a dozen survivors are still in the hospital <br>
wing, shackled to their beds with leather belts.) As our bus <br>
pulled up, the men ran towards the razor wire. They unfurled <br>
banners and T-shirts that read: "Why are we here?" "When
are <br>
you going to do something about this scandal?" "We cannot
<br>
talk freely." <br><br>
The women, however, are kept in another part of the prison, <br>
cellblock 1A, together with 19 "high-value" male detainees.
<br>
It is inside this olive-painted block, which leads into a <br>
courtyard of shimmering green saysaban trees and pink <br>
flowering shrubs, that the notorious photographs of US troops <br>
humiliating Iraqi prisoners were taken, many of them on the <br>
same day, November 8, 2003. A wooden interrogation shed is a <br>
short stroll away. As we arrived at the cellblock, the women <br>
shouted to us through the bars. An Iraqi journalist tried to <br>
talk to them; a female US soldier interrupted and pushed him <br>
away. The windows of the women's cells have been boarded up; <br>
birds nest in the outside drainpipe. Captain Dave Quantock, <br>
now in charge of prisoner detention at Abu Ghraib, confirmed <br>
that the women prisoners are in solitary confinement for 23 <br>
hours a day. They have no entertainment; they do have a <br>
Koran. <br><br>
Since the scandal first emerged there is general agreement <br>
that conditions at Abu Ghraib have improved. A new, superior <br>
catering company now provides the inmates' food, and all the <br>
guards involved in the original allegations of abuse have <br>
left. <br><br>
Nevertheless, there remain extremely troubling questions as <br>
to why these women came to be here. Like other Iraqi <br>
prisoners, all five are classified as "security detainees" -
<br>
a term invented by the Bush administration to justify the <br>
indefinite detention of prisoners without charge or legal <br>
access, as part of the war on terror. US military officials <br>
will only say that they are suspected of "anti-coalition <br>
activities". <br><br>
Two of the women are the wives of high-ranking and <br>
absconding Ba'ath party members; two are accused of financing <br>
the resistance; and one allegedly had a relationship with the <br>
former head of Iraq's secret police, the Mukhabarat. The <br>
women, in their 40s and 50s, come from Kirkuk and Baghdad; <br>
none has seen their families or children since their arrest <br>
earlier this year. <br><br>
According to Swadi, who managed to visit Abu Ghraib in late <br>
March, the allegations against the women are "absurd".
"One <br>
of them is supposed to be the mistress of the former director <br>
of the Mukhabarat. In fact, she's a widow who used to own a <br>
small shop. She also worked as a taxi driver, ferrying <br>
children to and from kindergarten. If she really had a <br>
relationship with the director of the Mukhabarat, she would <br>
scarcely be running a kiosk. These are baseless charges," she <br>
adds angrily. "She is the only person who can provide for her <br>
children." <br><br>
The women appear to have been arrested in violation of <br>
international law - not because of anything they have done, <br>
but merely because of who they are married to, and their <br>
potential intelligence value. US officials have previously <br>
acknowledged detaining Iraqi women in the hope of convincing <br>
male relatives to provide information; when US soldiers raid <br>
a house and fail to find a male suspect, they will frequently <br>
take away his wife or daughter instead. <br><br>
The International Committee of the Red Cross, whose <br>
devastating report on human rights abuses of Iraqi prisoners <br>
was delivered to the government in February but failed to <br>
ring alarm bells, says the problem lies with the system. "It <br>
is an absence of judicial guarantees," says Nada Doumani, <br>
spokesperson for the ICRC. "The system is not fair, precise <br>
or properly defined." <br><br>
During her visit to Abu Ghraib in March, one of the <br>
prisoners told Swadi that she had been forced to undress in <br>
front of US soldiers. "The Iraqi translator turned his head <br>
in embarrassment," she said. The release of detainees, <br>
meanwhile, appears to be entirely arbitrary: three weeks ago <br>
one woman prisoner who spoke fluent English and who had been <br>
telling her guards that she would sue them was suddenly <br>
released. "They got fed up with her," another lawyer, Amal
<br>
Alrawi, says. <br><br>
Last Friday, about 300 male prisoners were freed from Abu <br>
Ghraib, the first detainees to be released since the abuse <br>
scandal first broke. A further 475 are due to be released <br>
tomorrow, although it is not clear if any of the women will <br>
be among them. General Geoffery Miller, who is responsible <br>
for overhauling US military jails in Iraq, has promised to <br>
release 1,800 prisoners across Iraq "within 45 days". Some
<br>
2,000 are likely to remain behind bars, he says. Iraqi <br>
lawyers and officials aredemanding that the US military hands <br>
the prisons over to Iraqi management on June 30, when the <br>
coalition transfers limited powers to a UN-appointed <br>
caretaker Iraqi government. Last week, Miller <br>
said "negotiations" with Iraqi officials were ongoing.
<br><br>
Relatives who gathered outside Abu Ghraib last Friday said <br>
it was common knowledge that women had been abused inside the <br>
jail. Hamid Abdul Hussein, 40, who was there hoping to see <br>
his brother Jabar freed, said former detainees who had <br>
returned to their home town of Mamudiya reported that several <br>
women had been raped. "We've know this for months," he <br>
said. "We also heard that some women committed suicide."
<br><br>
While the abuse may have stopped, the US military appears <br>
to have learned nothing from the experience. Swadi says that <br>
when she last tried to visit the women at Abu Ghraib, "The US <br>
guards refused to let us in. When we complained, they <br>
threatened to arrest us." <br>
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