|
The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
|
February 18th,
2007 - Jailed 2 Years, Iraqi Tells of Abuse by Americans News article by the New York Times |
|
Jailed 2 Years, Iraqi Tells
of Abuse by Americans By Michael Moss and Souad Mekhennet New York Times February 18, 2007 Damascus, Syria - In the
early hours of Jan. 6, Laith al-Ani stood in a jail near the Baghdad airport
waiting to be released by the American military after two years and three
months in captivity. He struggled to quell his
hope. Other prisoners had gotten as far as the gate only to be brought back
inside, he said, and he feared that would happen to him as punishment for
letting his family discuss his case with a reporter. But as the morning light
grew, the American guards moved Mr. Ani, a 31-year-old father of two young children,
methodically toward freedom. They swapped his yellow prison suit for street
clothes, he said. They snipped off his white plastic identification bracelet.
They scanned his irises into their database. Then, shortly before 9 a.m.,
Mr. Ani said, he was brought to a table for one last step. He was handed a
form and asked to place a check mark next to the sentence that best described
how he had been treated: “I didn’t go through any
abuse during detention,” read the first option, in Arabic. “I have gone through abuse
during detention,” read the second. In the room, he said, stood
three American guards carrying the type of electric stun devices that Mr. Ani
and other detainees said had been used on them for infractions as minor as
speaking out of turn. “Even the translator told me
to sign the first answer,” said Mr. Ani, who gave a copy of his form to The
New York Times. “I asked him what happens if I sign the second one, and he
raised his hands,” as if to say, Who knows? “I thought if I don’t sign the
first one I am not going to get out of this place.” Shoving the memories of his
detention aside, he checked the first box and minutes later was running
through a cold rain to his waiting parents. “My heart was beating so hard,”
he said. “You can’t believe how I cried.” His mother, Intisar al-Ani,
raised her arms in the air, palms up, praising God. “It was like my soul
going out, from my happiness,” she recalled. “I hugged him hard, afraid the
Americans would take him away again.” Just three weeks earlier,
his last letter home - with its poetic yearnings and a sketch of a caged pink
heart - appeared in The Times in one of a series of articles on Iraq’s
troubled detention and justice system. After his release from the
American-run jail, Camp Bucca, Mr. Ani and other former detainees described
the sprawling complex of barracks in the southern desert near Kuwait as a
bleak place where guards casually used their stun guns and exposed prisoners
to long periods of extreme heat and cold; where prisoners fought among
themselves and extremist elements tried to radicalize others; and where
detainees often responded to the harsh conditions with hunger strikes and, at
times, violent protests. Through it all, Mr. Ani was
never actually charged with a crime; he said he was questioned only once
during his more than two years at the camp. American detention officials
acknowledged that guards used electric devices called Tasers to control
detainees, but they said they did so rarely and only when the guards were
physically threatened. The officials said that detainees had several ways to
report abuse without repercussions, and that all claims were investigated. Officials declined to give
specific details about why they had detained Mr. Ani or why they had freed
him. “He was released because the
board that reviewed his case didn’t believe he any longer posed a threat,”
said First Lt. Lea Ann Fracasso, a spokeswoman for detention operations, in a
written answer to questions. “He was originally detained as a security threat.
I don’t have anything more.” The Detention System The American detention camps
in Iraq now hold 15,500 prisoners, more than at any time since the war began.
The camps are filled with people like Mr. Ani who are being held without
charge and without access to tribunals where their cases are reviewed, the
Times examination published last December found. Mr. Ani, a women’s clothing
merchant, said he was detained in 2004 after American soldiers who were
searching for weapons in his six-family apartment building found an Iraqi
military uniform in the basement. His joy upon being released in January was
short-lived. Days later, he said, a Shiite militia ransacked his home in
Baghdad, looking to kill him. He hid, going from house to house, until he
could move his family out of Iraq. Now he is among the
estimated 1.5 million Iraqis who have taken refuge in neighboring Syria and
Jordan, where sectarian rifts are springing up. In one area of Damascus, Shiite
refugees from Iraq have established a mini version of Sadr City, the Baghdad
neighborhood. Sunni refugees, in turn, are forming their own enclaves. In
interviews, former detainees seethed with rage at the United States. One, a 43-year-old man from Samarra,
Iraq, said he was released last year despite having fought American troops. “I wish to go back to Iraq
and fight against the Americans, God willing,” vowed the man, who spoke on
the condition that he be identified only by his nom de guerre, Abu Abdulla,
for fear of reprisal. Mr. Ani has other
priorities, still exhausted from his detention and preoccupied with finding a
permanent home. But he regularly turns his television to a new station called
Al Zawra, transfixed by its running montage of videotaped attacks on American
troops. The station is owned by a
Sunni, Meshaan al-Juburi, a former Iraqi politician who was indicted last
year on charges of embezzling millions of American dollars; he denied the
charges and returned to Syria, where he lived before the war. The station has
become an information center for the Sunni insurgency and in the process has
exasperated American and Iraqi forces. In an interview at his office here,
Mr. Juburi said that he opposed Al Qaeda’s use of suicide bombers to kill
Iraqi civilians but was soliciting support for Iraqis intent on killing
American troops. When the image of a roadside bomb blowing up an American
Humvee appears on the large flat screen on his office wall, his eyebrows rise
and he urges his visitors to watch, “This is a good one.” A Nightmare Begins Mr. Ani’s ordeal began on
Oct. 14, 2004, when soldiers brought him in for what he described as
desultory questioning. “ ‘Are you married? How many
children? Sunni or Shiite? Which mosque do you pray in?’ ” Mr. Ani said he
was asked. “I said I didn’t pray, and they said, ‘Are you not Muslim,’ and I
said, ‘Yes, but I’m not praying and going to mosques.’ ” “They never asked me about
terrorism,” he said. “I’m a normal person, just a usual man, and don’t have
anything to do with anyone who was fighting against the Americans.” Mr. Ani spent a total of 44
days at two other American facilities before being sent to Camp Bucca. In
all, he said, he was questioned just once at each site. Mr. Ani said the electric
prods were first used on him on the way to Camp Bucca. “I was talking to
someone next to me and they used it,” he said, describing the device as black
plastic with a yellow tip and two iron prongs. He said the prods were
commonly used on him and other detainees as punishment. “The whole body starts to
shake and hurt,” he said. “And you lose consciousness for a couple of
seconds. One time they used it on my tongue. One guard held me from the left
and another on my back and another used it against my tongue and for four or
five days I couldn’t eat.” In a separate interview, the
insurgent from Samarra said such a device had been used on him for speaking
out of turn. Ahmed Majid al-Ghanem, 50, a former Baath Party official who was
also freed from Camp Bucca and is now living in Syria, said in a separate
interview that he witnessed the electric prods being used as punishment on
other detainees. The Times interviewed Mr.
Ani at his apartment in Damascus, the Syrian capital, where he sat on a couch
with his parents, wife and children. When he demonstrated how he had been
held for the electric prod, his 4-year-old daughter, Al Budur, mimicked his
actions. Lt. Col. Keir-Kevin Curry, a
detention system spokesman, said: “Every use of less than lethal force, to
include use of Tasers, is formally reported by facility leadership, ensuring
soldiers are in accordance with proper use. Touching a Taser to someone’s
tongue is not one of the approved uses.” Mr. Ani said guards treated
him kindly when he arrived at the jail on Nov. 20, 2004. He recalls being
given soap, and, when his hands cracked from the cold, a soldier bringing him
lotion and socks. But soon new guards came
“who had had special thoughts,” he said. “They were not allowing us to talk.
They cut off the salt, gave us food that was not fit for dogs. One guard
named David sometimes brought us outside to stay in the sun, or when it was
cold. He also didn’t respect our faith, telling us not to pray here, and when
we moved not to pray there.” The detainees also began
fighting among themselves. Those who spoke to the American guards were
ostracized. Long toilet lines further raised tensions. One day the guards searched
a makeshift prayer area, Mr. Ani said, “and they started to step on the
Korans, which fell down.” “A fight started,” he
continued. “There was a huge demonstration. The prisoners started to throw
their shoes at the guards, and we started to beat them with empty plastic
bottles. The guards shot at us with rubber bullets, but then prisoners were
killed and others were injured.” A Pentagon statement at the
time described such an incident in January 2005, saying that four detainees
were killed when guards were compelled to use deadly force to quell the riot
and that it was set off by a search for contraband. Colonel Curry said an
investigation concluded that a detainee leader had fabricated the Koran
allegations to instigate violence. Mr. Ani and other former
detainees said there were frequent demonstrations to protest various
grievances. Mr. Ghanem said he was released in late 2003 after hunger strikes
forced camp officials to review his case and those of others. Detention officials said
they were also fighting radicalization at the camps and were trying to
identify and isolate extremists. Former detainees said in interviews that the
influence of Islamic extremists was still growing. At Camp Bucca, they said,
hundreds of men formed a group called the Brothers. Members shaved their
beards and otherwise masked their ideology so they would be placed with other
detainees. Mr. Ani generally slept in a
wooden barrackslike structure, with a mattress on the ground and a nail on
the wall for hanging clothes. Once, when the guards found an improvised
needle that he said was used to repair clothes, he was taken to an isolated
cell, where he was kept for 24 days. “You cannot see the
difference between day and night,” he said. “There was no opening, not even
in the door.” Colonel Curry said it was
standard to discipline detainees when they did not follow procedure. Mr. Ani despaired of ever
being released. His letter that was printed in The Times ended with, “I hope
I can be dust in the storms of Bucca so that I can reach you.” Dangers Beyond Jail “I didn’t see any kind of solution
for me,” Mr. Ani said after his release. “The only solution was to die,” he
said, his eyes welling with tears. “I was hoping to die.” In releasing Mr. Ani, the
American military transferred him to Camp Cropper in Baghdad and gave him
$25, which he and his parents used to hire a taxi. Along the way home, they
had to dodge Shiite-controlled checkpoints, and just days later, he said, he
narrowly escaped capture by a Shiite militia. Mr. Ani and other Iraqis say
they believe these militias have found a way to learn when Sunni men are
released from jail and then hunt and kill them. Maj. Gen. John D. Gardner,
commander of American detainee operations, said that he had heard such
concerns and that he was trying to alter the process of releasing detainees to
improve their safety. Mr. Ani said that for him
there was only one way to stay alive: flee Iraq. He said he was scared and
puzzled about his next step. He said he felt that he could not stay in Syria,
if only because work was scarce. But he must compete with other refugees for
the attention of another host country. “Until now, I can’t sleep,
really,” he said. “Whenever I hear something noisy I stand up. I’m in a very
bad psychological situation. I can’t stop thinking of what we should do. I
don’t have a future here. How should we live?” When his uncle put on Al
Zawra, the satellite television station, Mr. Ani turned to look at the scenes
of Sunni children who had been killed and the attacks on American soldiers. “I am an Iraqi,” he said. “I
love my country. Of course, everyone who is an Iraqi at the moment, we are
thinking how can we support our country.” “The United States through
its actions made people hate the Americans much more than before.” Copyright 2007 The New York
Times Company External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/18/world/middleeast/18bucca.html |