Posted on 04/02/2003 2:21:07 PM PST by MadIvan
“WE KILL, we kill,” muttered the Iraqi driver of the pick-up truck speeding through the night-time streets of Baghdad bringing his helpless cargo of handcuffed Western journalists to Saddam Hussein’s notorious Abu Ghraib prison.
Thus began the first of eight days in Iraqi captivity for Matt McAllester, a British foreign correspondent, the photographers Moises Saman, Molly Bingham and Johan Spanner, and a peace activist, Philip Latasha, who were seized without warning or explanation from their rooms in the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad while covering the war on Iraq.
During the week in which neither families nor friends had any idea of their whereabouts, the terrified quintet sat in adjacent, bare-concrete cells forbidden to talk to each other, their solitude punctuated by the screams of Iraqi prisoners being led away to torture from the cells around them, the thud of anti-aircraft fire and the pounding of US bombs that were exploding uncomfortably close.
Then, after sleepless nights and blindfolded interrogation sessions, they were released as suddenly as they were captured — seemingly after the intercession of Yassir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, and other intermediaries. Yesterday the exhausted group arrived in the Jordanian capital, Amman, where they told for the first time of their capture, ordeal and release.
“I frequently thought we were going to die,” said Mr McAllester, 33, a London-born Scot raised in Edinburgh and now working for the New York Newsday newspaper.
Describing how Iraqi prisoners were in cells across a narrow corridor, Mr McAllester said that he had to turn his back to avoid watching other inmates being dragged away and tortured each night.
“We could hear screams, especially at night,” he said. Unshaven, rib-thin and wearing a crumpled Thomas Pink shirt, he slowly detailed the conditions inside Abu Ghraib, where Amnesty International claims 23 political prisoners, mainly Shia Muslims, have been put to death.
“They were being taken from their cells for a session, or meeting or whatever you want to call it and were being beaten in front of us, a yard or two away from where we were sleeping, with some kind of implement,” he said. “One night one guy was moaning for about an hour and it sounded like they brought a doctor for him.
“I have no idea who was doing it, whether it was the interrogators or the prison guards, but we saw a lot of people inside that prison who had been in there a lot longer than we were and who didn’t have the support network to get them out.”
Although none was given a reason for the arrests by Iraqi intelligence agents — in the early hours of March 25 while other Western journalists continue working — they appear to have been singled out because they did not enter on a regular journalist visa.
Mr McAllester and Mr Saman, 29, arrived in Baghdad a month ago with a group of “human shields” and although they insist that they clearly identified themselves as journalists on the group visa, Mr McAllester admits that they “pushed the envelope” by peeling away from the group with which they were supposed to stay.
Miss Bingham, 34, once a photographer for Al Gore, the former US Vice-President, and Johan Rydeng Spanner, a 28-year-old Danish photographer, entered as tourists just before bombing began and said that they had planned to ask the authorities to change their status to journalists the day that they were arrested.
Miss Bingham told how she had been seized by Iraqi intelligence agents in her hotel room and led away blindfolded with the others for what they were told would be a “few questions”. Repeated interrogation sessions about their visas, photographs, stories and whether they were government agents left them fearing death either at the hands of their “disconcertingly polite” captors or from US bombers.
Forbidden to speak, she and Mr McAllester developed a “three tap” code on their cell walls to assure each other that they were still there or draw attention to a noise or event.
None was tortured — Mr McAllester saying simply: “I sense they knew we were scared enough and they didn’t need to do anything more.” Then, after seven days, their guards put them into the same cell for the final night before saying: “You must leave Iraq now and not come back.”
Unwilling to believe that they were free until they had crossed into Jordan at 9pm on Tuesday, all said they simply had no time to think about what they would do next.
None saw any other foreigners inside Abu Ghraib. But Mr McAllester said that, as he was ushered from one room, a quick glance around revealed something that gave him pause. “I believe I saw a British passport in a bag on a desk.”
You see, in their twisted minds, this isn't about a sadistic, monstrous, third world tyrant who brutalizes millions of his own people (and has killed just as many).
This is only about a right-wing, conservative, President who is exercising American military might.
And that scares the troglydites in the little third world, socialist, pissant states. They get scared when America exercises its power. Their psuedo-intellectual intelligentsia that slut around in their little jet-set, capaccino-clatch, high-society hate that there's a strong, conservative, President in America that they can't reign in and constrain.
F- 'em all. I wish we had the army, and the b@lls, to take on half the world, right now.
I don't care if I ever travel outside this country again. P!ss on all of 'em.
There will be a reckoning when this is done. Between us and a lot of these maggot-infested, third world, hell holes. And that settling of accounts can't come too soon for me.
I never thought I would harbor such hatred for the world, but right now, about half the planet is on my sh!t list and I wouldn't lift a finger to help any of 'em - if they were drowning in half an inch of water, I wouldn't be kind enough to kick them over.
My venom is endless, right now, for the majority of this world. GGGGGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!
And yet so many of the Muslim countries ---including the Shias are taking Saddam's side in this and hate the US for taking down this dictatorship. They should be ashamed.
“WE KILL, we kill,” muttered the Iraqi driver of the pick-up truck speeding through the night-time streets of Baghdad bringing his helpless cargo of handcuffed Western journalists to Saddam Hussein’s notorious Abu Ghraib prison.
Thus began the first of eight days in Iraqi captivity for Matt McAllester, a British foreign correspondent, the photographers Moises Saman, Molly Bingham and Johan Spanner, and a peace activist, Philip Latasha, who were seized without warning or explanation from their rooms in the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad while covering the war on Iraq.
During the week in which neither families nor friends had any idea of their whereabouts, the terrified quintet sat in adjacent, bare-concrete cells forbidden to talk to each other, their solitude punctuated by the screams of Iraqi prisoners being led away to torture from the cells around them, the thud of anti-aircraft fire and the pounding of US bombs that were exploding uncomfortably close.
Please let me know if you want ON or OFF my General Interest ping list!. . .don't be shy. 
Well, we know what is motivating THEM, but what about France and Germany and Mexico and other non-Muslim countries? I think when accounts start getting settled after this Iraq finale, some of these countrys' leaders will have some explaining to do. I really don't believe that a pacifistic ideal has a whole lot to do with it. I think it is more likely what they're afraid we'll discover about their dealings with Saddam.
That will make quite a picture when our boy's free those poor bastard's from Saddam's hell holes.
Well once again a liberal is wrong. There is a support network coming to get these poor souls out. It's called the British, and American Military.
It would be ironic in a very sick way, too: they would be taking up space in Abu Ghraib that therefore could not go to an Iraqi dissident--they would be acting as human shields for the Iraqi people, protecting some of them from Saddam. Taking up the suffering of others is Christlike in a way.
Bush is fighting that war, but he's doing it one country at a time. And winning in Iraq will help us to win in other places later.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.