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Iraqi Prisoner Details Abuse by Americans from AP 
May 3, 2004 Iraqi Prisoner Details Abuse by Americans By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 5:17 a.m. ET NAJAF, Iraq (AP) -- A former Iraqi prisoner says the allegations that inmates at Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib prison have suffered indignities at the hands of their American guards came as no shock to him. In an interview Sunday with The Associated Press, Dhia al-Shweiri said he too was stripped naked during his stay in the prison and the humiliation was worse than the torture he endured under Saddam Hussein. Now the 30-year-old is in the al-Mahdi Army, a militia fighting on behalf of an anti-American Shiite Muslim cleric. For months, human rights groups and former prisoners had complained of mistreatment at detention centers. But their protests were widely dismissed as politically motivated until the U.S. command started an investigation in January. Six American soldiers are now facing court-martial. The allegations exploded onto the world stage this past week after CBS' ``60 Minutes II'' broadcast images allegedly showing Iraqis stripped naked, hooded and being tormented by their U.S. captors. An internal U.S. Army report found that Iraqi detainees were subjected to ``sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses,'' according to The New Yorker magazine. On Saturday, Britain's Daily Mirror newspaper published a front-page picture of a British soldier apparently urinating on a hooded prisoner. The newspaper said it had been given the pictures by serving soldiers from the Queen's Lancashire Regiment. America's top general, Gen. Richard Myers, said Sunday there was no evidence of ``systematic abuse'' and the actions of ``just a handful'' have unfairly tainted all American forces. However, Amnesty International said it has uncovered a ``pattern of torture'' of Iraqi prisoners by coalition troops, and called for an independent investigation into the claims of abuse. Dan Senor, spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority, said the U.S. investigation will be full and aggressive. ``Careers will be ended and criminal charges are going to be leveled,'' Senor said on CNN. Al-Shweiri said he was arrested by American forces in October in Baghdad and accused of belonging to the al-Mahdi Army of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. He said he was working in a fabric shop at the time and had not yet become involved with the militia. His account could not be independently verified. During his stay at Abu Ghraib, he said was asked to take off his clothes only once and for about 15 minutes. ``I thought they wanted me to change into the red prison uniform, so I took off my clothes, down to my underwear. Then he asked me to take off my underwear. I started arguing with him, but in the end he made me take off my underwear,'' al-Shweiri said. He said he and six other prisoners -- all hooded -- had to face the wall and bend over a little as they put their hands on the wall. ``They made us stand in a way that I am ashamed to describe. They came to look at us as we stood there. They knew this would humiliate us,'' he said, adding that he was not sodomized. He said the American guards wanted to make the prisoners feel like women -- which he called ``the worst insult.'' ``They were trying to humiliate us, break our pride. We are men. It's OK if they beat me. Beatings don't hurt us, it's just a blow. But no one would want their manhood to be shattered,'' he said. It was his third stint in the prison. He was jailed twice by Saddam's regime -- for 19 months in the early 1990s and again in 1999 -- during which he said he was given electric shocks, beaten and hung from the ceiling with his hands tied behind his back. ``But that's better than the humiliation of being stripped naked,'' he said. ``Shoot me here,'' he added, pointing between his eyes, ``but don't do this to us.'' Like many Shiite Muslims, he said he first felt gratitude toward the Americans for ending their brutal repression under Saddam, a Sunni. ``I hated Saddam so much that when the Americans came, I viewed them as liberators. I was happy and supported them. But soon it became clear that they are no liberators but occupiers,'' he said. ``I had seen how oppressed people were under Saddam and I refused to give in to oppression and injustice. We must fight oppression.'' When al-Shweiri left American detention, he said his hatred for Saddam was replaced with one for America and two months ago he joined al-Sadr's militia. Now with the future of the al-Mahdi Army uncertain, many militiamen are worried. The Americans have demanded the militia be disbanded and that al-Sadr, who is accused of involvement in the death of a rival cleric, turn himself in. ``If Seyed Muqtada orders us to disband, we will. If he orders us to die, we will die. And if he tells us to live, we will live. We have nothing to do with the Americans and what they demand from us,'' al-Shweiri said. |