A US Reporter Interviews Survivors of Abu Ghraib
Dear America: The Fire Is Spreading and We Are the Arsonists
July 22, 2005
A US Reporter Interviews Survivors of Abu Ghraib
By Dahr Jamail / World Tribunal Testimony
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| Citizen Journalist Dahr Jamail presents photos of US military's destruction in Iraq. |
(June 25, 2005) -- I first went to Iraq in November of 2003 as an American citizen both frustrated and horrified by what my unelected government was doing. I went to report on the situation because I was deeply troubled by the "journalism" being provided by the corporate media. At the time, as a frustrated mountain climber from Alaska working as a journalist in Iraq, I never would have believed I would be providing testimony to the World Tribunal on Iraq. I want to thank the organizers for this opportunity. I am honored to be here in solidarity with the Iraqi people.
In May of 2004 I interviewed a man who had just been released from Abu Ghraib. Like so many I interviewed from various US military detention facilities who'd been tortured horrifically, he still managed to maintain his sense of humor.
He began laughing when telling me how CIA agents made him beat other prisoners. He laughed, he said, because he had been beaten himself prior to this, and was so tired that all he could do to beat other detained Iraqis was lift his arm and let it drop on the other men. Later, he laughed again as he told me what else had been done to him, when he said, "The Americans brought electricity to my ass before they brought it to my house."
But this testimony is not about the indomitable spirit of the Iraqi people. About the dignity and strength of Iraqis, we need no testimony. This testimony is about ongoing violations of international law being committed by the occupiers of Iraq on a daily basis in regards to rampant torture, the neglect and obstruction of the health care sector and the ongoing failure to allow Iraqis to reconstruct their infrastructure.
The Testimony of Ali Abbas
To discuss torture, there are many stories I could use here, but I'll use two examples indicative of scores of others I documented while in Iraq.
Ali Abbas lives in the Al-Amiriyah district of Baghdad and worked in civil administration. So many of his neighbors were detained that friends urged him to go to the nearby US base to try and get answers for why so many innocent people were being detained. He went three times.
On the fourth he was detained himself. Within two days he was transferred from the military base to Abu Ghraib, where he was held over three months without charges before being released. "The minute I got there, the suffering began," said Abbas about his interrogator, "I asked him for water, and he said after the investigation I would get some. He accused me of so many things and asked me so many questions. Among them he said I hated Christians."
He was forced to strip naked shortly after arriving, and remained that way for most of his stay in the prison. "They made us lay on top of each other naked as if it was sex, and beat us with a broom," he said. In addition to being beaten on their genitals, detainees were also denied water and food for extended periods of time, then were forced to watch as their food was thrown in the trash.
Treatment also included having a loaded gun held to his head to prevent him from crying out in pain as his hand-ties were tightened. "My hands were enlarged because there was no blood because they cuffed them so tight," he told me, "My head was covered with the sack, and they fastened my right hand to a pole with handcuffs. They made me stand on my toes to clip me to it."
Abbas said soldiers doused him in cold water while holding him under a fan, and oftentimes, "They put on a loudspeaker, put the speakers on my ears and said, "Shut Up, Fuck Fuck Fuck!" In this manner Abbas's interrogators routinely deprived him of sleep.
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Sadiq Zoman was detained by US troops and, after a month in custody, was delivered to a local hospital in a comaatose state. His body bore signs of torture. Credit: Photograph by staff at Salahadeen Hospital, Tikrit.
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'Our Aim Is to Put You in Hell'
Abbas said that at one point, "Two men came, one a foreigner and one a translator. He asked me who I was. I said I'm a human being. They told me, 'We are going to cut your head off and send you to hell. We will take you to Guantánamo.'"
A female soldier told him, "Our aim is to put you in hell so you will tell the truth. These are the orders we have from our superiors, to turn your lives into hell." Abbas added, "They shit on us, used dogs against us, used electricity and starved us." He told me, "Saddam Hussein used to have people like those who tortured us. Why do they put Saddam into trial, but they do not put the Americans to trial?"
But unlike Saddam Hussein, the US interrogators also desecrated Islam as part of their humiliation. Abbas was made to fast during the first day of Eid, the breaking of the fast of Ramadan, which is haram (forbidden). Sometimes at night when he would read his Koran, Abbas had to hold it in the hallway for light. "Soldiers would walk by and kick the Holy Koran, and sometimes they would try to piss on it or wipe shit on it," he said.
Abbas did not feel this was the work of a few individual soldiers. "This was organized, it wasn't just individuals, and every one of the troops in Abu Ghraib was responsible for it."
Accounts by human rights groups support this. According to an April 2005 Human Rights Watch report, "Abu Ghraib was only the tip of the iceberg, it's now clear that abuse of detainees has happened all over -- from Afghanistan to Guantánamo Bay to a lot of third-country dungeons where the United States has sent prisoners. And probably quite a few other places we don't even know about."
The report adds, "Harsh and coercive interrogation techniques such as subjecting detainees to painful stress positions and extended sleep deprivation have been routinely used in detention centers throughout Iraq. An ICRC report concluded that in military intelligence sections of Abu Ghraib, 'methods of physical and psychological coercion used by the interrogators appeared to be part of the standard operating procedures by military intelligence personnel to obtain confessions and extract information.'"
Amnesty International has also released similar findings.
US Doctors Complicit in Torture
Other human rights groups report that US military doctors, nurses, and medics have been complicit in torture and other illegal procedures such as those administered to Sadiq Zoman.
55 year-old Zoman, detained from his home in Kirkuk in a raid by US soldiers that produced no weapons, was taken to a police office in Kirkuk, to the Kirkuk Airport Detention Center, the Tikrit Airport Detention Center and finally to the 28th Combat Support Hospital, where he was treated by Dr. Michael Hodges, a Lt. Col.
Lt. Col. Hodges' medical report listed Zoman's primary condition as hypoxic brain injury (brain damage caused by lack of oxygen) "with persistent vegetative state," myocardial infarction (heart attack), and heat stroke."
After one month in custody, Zoman was dropped off in a coma at the General Hospital in Tikrit by US soldiers. Zoman's last name was listed as his first name on the report, despite the fact that all of his identification papers were taken during the raid on his home. Because of this, it took his desperate family weeks to locate him in the hospital.
Hodges's medical report did not mention the fact that the back of Zomans' head was bashed in, nor that he had electrical burn marks on the bottoms of his feet and genitals, or why he had lash marks across his back and chest.
Today he lies in bed still in a coma, and there has been no compensation provided to his now impoverished family for what was done to Sadiq Zoman.
Another aspect I shall discuss is the catastrophic situation of the health system in Iraq. I've recently released a report on the condition of Iraq's hospitals under occupation.
Dear America: The Fire Is Spreading and We Are the Arsonists
By Eve Ensler / Jury Member, World Tribunal on Iraq
An Open Letter to the Apathetic, the Brain-Washed,
the Prescription Drug-Dazed and Brain-Dead,
the American Patriots and Pseudo Patriots
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Eve Ensler
Credit: John O'Hara / Chronicle |
(July 1, 2005) -- Dear America, I am longing to reach you-crossing this river of indifference and consumption and denial. I am trying to find you, reaching out through the desperate limitations of words and descriptions, swimming through the rhetoric of terror and God.
I need you to wake up. The house is on fire and you are still sleeping, lulled by the intoxication of smoke and mirrors. I need you to wake up and I know that shaking you, scaring you will only make you cling to your sleep and sleep more.
How then do I tell you what's going on? How do I tell you about the one hundred thousand dead Iraqi people that you and I are responsible for murdering.
(1) Each one of them valued their life, longed for their morning, cherished their first cup of milk or coffee or tea. In what way shall I deliver what I learned? The substance identical to illegal napalm that melted tender five year old skin; the cluster bombs that have left their murderous and disguised offspring, throngs of bomblets set to explode, scattered on the Iraqi earth; the depleted uranium from the Bunker Busters we dropped that now lives in lungs and livers and soil.
(2) How do I tell you about the strategic planning of such atrocities in the boardrooms, the backrooms, the back seats of limos, the organized take over and looting of Iraq right out from under the terrorized, hungry, thirsty Iraqi people.
(3) How do I get you to listen to the stories of our soldiers who are trying to kill themselves now, longing to escape the madness of murdering and maiming for no reason.
(4) Please don't go back to sleep. I know how hard it is to hear of the massive black holes, called prisons we have dug to hold thousands without charging them, without trials or the torture, the meanness, the cruelty we are inflicting upon them.
(5) America, those who now control our country have changed and ended law. I do not believe you are so calloused or selfish that you do not care. Your sleep is induced. You are distracted and derailed. The corporations have concocted and perfected these sleeping potions for years, developing ingredients to make you despise every bit of yourself, to feel ugly and fat and stupid and poor and not enough.
And so you spend your time and every bit of the money you do not have buying products that will make you better, skinnier, lighter, whiter, tighter. And as you consume and consume, the corporations consume you. They take your money and your time and your voice and your instincts and your outrage and your sorrow and your anger and your grief. They consume your courage and leave fear in its place. They devour your conscience and your memory and your compassion.
And how do I speak when they are sure to tie my tongue? When they will say I do not love my country or support the troops or honor the dead or believe in their God? How do I break through your sealed wrapping, your self-obsession, your TVheadphonedDVDcell pod?
America I am getting desperate and I know this will not get me published or heard. Those who control the information will say I'm extreme, that I've gone mad. But I have heard the cries of children in the exploding houses of Falluja.
(6) I have seen the agonized faces of the sleepless Iraqi women who still clutch the outline of their charred dead babies in their arms. I have watched as we as a nation grow more isolated, despised and alone.
America, there is not much time left. The fire is spreading, consuming the world. We are the arsonists. We will need each other to find our way out through the lies and haze. It will take our greatest imagination, courage and skill to subdue these flames.
Eve Ensler is the Obie-Award-winning author of The Vagina Monologues. Ensler served as one of the Tribunal's 14 jurors.
Footnotes:- Iraq Death Toll Soared 'Post-War'
100,000 Iraqis dead (Lancet survey)
- US Admits to Use of Napalm
Irregular Weapons Used Against Iraq
WHO Studies Depleted Uranium in Iraq
- Rumsfeld, Amnesty Trade Barbs over Prisoner Abuse
- Army Probes Soldier Suicides
Military Families Against the war
- Rumsfeld, Amnesty Trade Barbs over Prisoner Abuse
Systematic Use of Psychological Torture by US Forces
- This Is Our Guernica
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