Posted on 09/09/2006 5:33:23 PM PDT by saquin
The notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad is at the centre of fresh abuse allegations just a week after it was handed over to Iraqi authorities, with claims that inmates are being tortured by their new captors.
Inside the 100-yard long cell block the smell of excrement was overpowering. Four to six prisoners shared each of the 12ft by 15ft cells along either side and the walls were smeared with filth. The cell block was patrolled by guards who carried long batons and shouted angrily at the prisoners to stand up.
Access to the part of the prison containing terrorism suspects was denied, but from that block came the sound of screaming. The screaming continued for a long time.
"I am sure someone was being beaten, they were screaming like they were being hit," the witness reported. "I felt scared, I was asking what was happening in the terrorist section.
"I heard shouting, like someone had a hot iron on their body, screams. The officer said they were just screaming by themselves. I was hearing the screams throughout the visit."
The witness said that even in the thieves' section prisoners were being treated badly. "Someone was shouting 'Please help us, we want the human rights officers, we want the Americans to come back'," he said.
Prisoners interviewed in the presence of their jailers said they were frightened for their safety. They complained that chicken and milk had been cut from their rations, leaving them on rice and water. They also complained about the oppressive heat.
Outside the prison, relatives of some of the inmates said they were being tortured by their captors. One woman, who gave her name as Omsaad, said: "My son Saad [who was arrested in Fallujah as a suspected insurgent] said he is being tortured by the Iraqis to confess the name of his leader. I met my son and he told me they were being treated badly by the Iraqis."
Haleem Aleulami, who was released from the jail last week, three weeks after being arrested in Ramadi for carrying a pistol in his car, said the Americans had treated him better when they ran the jail. He claimed that visits from the International Red Cross staff had dried up and accused local human rights workers of being members of Shia groups who turned a blind eye to problems in the jail.
"The people are Iraqis and they are members of the Sciri and al Dawa parties. They have a good relationship with the leaders of the jail and they keep quiet," he said. The guards swore at the ordinary prisoners, he said, but those in the terrorist section were treated more brutally.
"The guards were swearing at us, but in the terrorist section they were beating them. I heard it all the time. Everyone knows what is happening."
And Khalid Alaani, who was also picked up in Ramadi suspected of involvement in Sunni terrorism, said: "We preferred the Americans. We asked to move with them to Baghdad airport because we knew the treatment would be changed because we know what the Iraqis are. When the Americans left everything changed."
Staff at the jail said that the prisoners were allowed out from their cells for only 15 to 20 minutes a day because of the danger from the regular mortar attacks. They are no longer allowed access to the main hall where the Americans had allowed them to watch television and the room is now reserved for the use of officers and guards. Staff explained that the air conditioning in the cell blocks had broken, although it was working in their quarters.
One officer, Capt Ali Abdelzaher, said: "We have a problem with the financing for the food, not like the Americans, and there is a technical problem with the air conditioning."
Capt Abdelzaher also confirmed that a number of inmates had been transferred from the Jadriyah detention centre, along with their guards and interrogators.
Graphic stories of abuse at that previously secret facility emerged after US soldiers found 169 prisoners showing signs of torture last November.
Most of the prisoners held by the Americans at Abu Ghraib were either released in recent months or transferred to a new £32 million detention centre at Camp Cropper near Baghdad International Airport.
Yesterday, the International Red Cross confirmed that its visits to the prison had been suspended since January 2005 on security grounds.
No. I mean 24/7 coverage on every news channel, every newspaper, and magazine how they covered prison abuses when Americans were in charge.
Once the Iraqis are running the show, they cant make America the bad guy.
Absolutely pathetic.
I'm sure he will solve all your problems.
After all, look how effective he's been in the past.
What? And have the ACLU on our backs again? No thank you. We're a-scared of the ACLU.
Impossible!!!
Everybody and I mean Everybody knows how terrible and brutal We Americans are.
I refuse to believe that anybody wants Americans back!
</sarcasm>
Nobody wants Iraq to devolve into total chicanery, but I think river rat's post #32 makes some sense. It may work in our favor.
That's a shame.
The Iraqis are the ones suffering the most from the terrorists. It is natural that they want payback.
I'm sure the liberal moonbats will still find a way to blame bush
"we want the Americans to come back"
Now that's a classic. I love it.
I like to think of myself as a pretty compassionate individual, but I find it impossible to have any at all for these people.
I do think that once I had extracted what I needed from them, I would do the humane thing and put them down (Yes, just like a rabid dog, that's exactly how I classify them).
Good move by our guys for putting someone else in charge of this operation... takes the ammmunition away from cry-baby media and bleeding hearts. They can whine all they want about what the Iraqis are doing in there and nobody will even care.
In case of the off chance there is anyone in there who has been incorrectly detained, my prayers to those poor souls. But something tells me they are few if any.
Exactly.
LOL! Right!
Leopards don't change their spots. It's a cultural thing. Iraqis are used to using "other" non ACLU methods to deal with their scumbags.
That in itself doesn't mean we failed
Really? Doesn't make much sense to me. The post is a mishmash screed that ranges from the childish "sucks to be you" attitude to the usual "NUKE'EM ALL" nonsense (what Iran has to do with a thread detailing Iraqi soldiers abusing prisoners in an Iraqi prison is beyond me) laced with a touch of profanity.
Once again, if we are serious about having this Iraqi government succeed with public support, we need to have this behavior stopped.
The prisoners probably smear the stuff on the walls themselves. Or while throwing it at the guards miss and hit the walls instead. That's what they do down in Guantanamo Bay. It's a cultural thing, as I understand it.
In his three years at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost invented ways to write poetry. Dost, 44, read from his works recently at his home in Peshawar, Pakistan. (Declan Walsh for the Boston Globe)
We can liberate them, but I doubt we can civilize them if they don't have it partly within themselves.
you HAD your chance stooopid... now tough on you.
Then the idea of nation building a 3rd world country (as opposed to destroying a nation state threat i.e. Saddam, which was needed) is a mistake, the decision to attempt so in Iraq was a mistake and we need to exit post haste. Their cultural affinities, being what they are, make such a route an inevitability.
The prisoners are TERRORISTS!
Hellooo.
Next you want to release them in the name of 'humanity'.
The Americans treated them with kid-gloves, way too to gently considering that they are hardened terrorists who are the ones who are blowing up American AND IRAQIS by the dozens and hundreds. And the terrorist loving bleeding hearts complained.
Now the Iraqis are treating them the way murdering terrorists should be treated, it's high time someone does.
Why aren't you crying for their innocent victims, instead of the mass murdering terrorists?!
You and Kofi.
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