Now here's a story to shame us all. It's about America's shameful prison camps in Iraq. It's about the beating of prisoners during interrogation. "Sources" may be a dubious word in journalism right now, but the sources for the beatings in Iraq are impeccable and any US military intelligence officers who want to call me a liar can explain how three of their prisoners in the Bagram camp in Afghanistan were murdered during interrogation.
This story is also about the gunning down of three prisoners in Baghdad, two of them "while trying to escape". But most of all, it's about Qais Mohamed al-Salman.
Qais al-Salman is just the sort of guy that US Ambassa-dor Paul Bremer and his dead-end assistants in the Anglo-American occupation authorities need right now. He hated Saddam, fled Iraq in 1976, then returned after the "liberation" with a briefcase literally full of plans to help in the restoration of his country's infrastructure and water purification system.
He's an engineer who has worked in Africa, Asia and Europe.
He is a Danish citizen. He speaks good English. He even likes America. Or did until June 6 this year.
That day he was travelling in Abu Nawas Street when his car came under fire from American troops. He says he never saw a checkpoint. Bullets hit the tyres and his driver and another passenger ran for their lives. Qais al-Salman was carrying his files on water systems and agricultural projects for the "new" Iraq and stood meekly beside the vehicle. He was carrying his Danish passport, Danish driving licence and medical records.
But let him tell his own story. "A civilian car came up with American soldiers in it. Then more soldiers in military vehicles. I told them I didn't understand what had happened, that I was a scientific researcher.
"But they made me lie down in the street, my face on the tarmac, tied my arms behind me with plastic-and-steel cuffs and tied up my feet and put me in one of their vehicles."
The next bit of his story carries implications for our own journalistic profession.
"After 10 minutes in the vehicle, I was taken out again.
"There were journalists with cameras. The Americans untied me, then made me lie on the road again. Then, in front
of the cameras, they tied my hands and feet all over again and put me back in the vehicle.
"I told them my elderly mother was expecting me, that she must know what was happening. They ignored me."
If this wasn't a common story in Baghdad today - if the gross injustices meted out to ordinary Iraqis and the equally gross mistreatment in America's prison camps here was not so common - then Qais al-Salman's story would not be so important.
Amnesty International turned up in Baghdad on Monday to investigate - along with Saddam's monstrous crimes - the mass detention centre run by the Americans at Baghdad International Airport in which up to 2 000 prisoners live, with neither their own lawyers nor any trial, and in hot, airless tents.
The makeshift jail is called Camp Cropper and there have already been two attempted breakouts. Both would-be escapers, needless to say, were swiftly shot dead by their American captors.
Yesterday, Amnesty - equally needless to say - was forbidden permission to visit Camp Cropper. Nor am I surprised. Because this is where the Americans took Qais al-Salman on June 6.
He was put in Tent B, a vast canvas room containing up to 130 prisoners.
"There were different classes of people there," Qais al-Salman recalls.
"There were people of high culture, doctors and university people, and there were the most dirty animal people, thieves and criminals the like of which I never saw before.
"In the morning, I was taken for interrogation before an American military intelligence officer. He was wearing a mil-itary T-shirt and trousers. I explained everything to him, my Danish citizenship, my job.
"I showed him letters invol-ving me in USAID projects and investment schemes with a UK company. He kept asking me why I had these documents.
"Then he pinned a label on my shirt. It read: 'Suspected Assassin'."
Now there probably are some assassins in Camp Cropper.
The good, the bad and the ugly have been incarcerated there: old Baathists, possible Iraqi torturers, looters and just about anyone who has got in the way of the American military. Only "selected" prisoners are beaten during interrogation. Again, I repeat, the source is impeccable - and Western.
Fortunately, Qais al-Salman was not one of the "selected".
But he was given no water to wash in - most of the prisoners at that time caught skin infections - and after trying to explain his innocence to a second interrogator, he went on hunger strike.
No formal charges were ever made against him. There were no rules for the American jailers. Nor investigations into the shooting of the escaping prisoners.
It was Qais al-Salman who led hundreds of men in a miniature "intifada" at the prison, screaming "Freedom, Freedom, Freedom" at their jailers and hurling their wooden tent supports over the razor wire at the prison guards.
It's a sign of Qais al-Salman's integrity that he praises several of his captors; the American major who prevented his men and women guards from over-reacting to the riot, and his third and fourth interrogators who dutifully wrote down his long explanation of what the United States should do to be successful in its dealings with Iraqis.
Relieve Iraq of its $360 billion debt, he told them, learn about Iraqi culture and society, give the country back its share in OPEC. "They wrote all this down. They agreed with me."
But it was another 12 days before an American lawyer read through his documents and decided that Qais al-Salman was an innocent man.
"Some soldiers drove me back to Baghdad after 33 days in that camp. They dropped me in Rashid Street and gave me back my documents and Danish passport and they said 'Sorry'."
Amnesty are now taking up his case with the Americans. As for Qais al-Salman, he reflects upon the meaning of occupation. "It's easy to say 'Sorry', isn't it?"
