|
Comment on this article |
Email this Article
|
|
News :: Prisons |
|
Prisoner ‘tortured to death’ |
Current rating: 0 |
by Ptycotosa Valahermosa
(No verified email address) |
14 May 2004
|
|
FREEDOM, AT LAST: An Iraqi hugging his two sons who were released from the Abu Ghraib prison yesterday in Baquba, 60km northeast of Baghdad. — AFP |
BERLIN — German television reported yesterday that US troops tortured to death an Iraqi prisoner in their custody in January this year and captured the abuse on film as prisoners released form Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison recounted their tales of horror.
Spiegel TV said in a statement that it had witness accounts and documents to prove that 47-year-old Asad Abdul Kareem Abdul Jaleel had been killed at the US military base Al Asad west of the town Khan Al Baghdadi.
The investigative news programme said that he had been picked up on the open road and taken to the base on suspicion of belonging to an insurgent group.
“A fellow prisoner gave Spiegel TV a detailed description how the man was sadistically tortured in the five days after his arrest,” the statement said.
“US soldiers also took photos of this abuse.”
The US occupation in Iraq has been rocked by a series of photographs showing abuse of Iraqi detainees by US military personnel at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad.
Spiegel TV said that US forces had tried to cover up the death of the prisoner at Al Asad by declaring in a report that he had “died in his sleep” in a document signed by pathologist Luis A. Santiago. The death certificate stated that no autopsy had been conducted.
But an Iraqi coroner who received the body of the prisoner from US forces told Spiegel TV that man’s body showed “clear signs of torture”.
“The photographs of the corpse, which Spiegel TV has also seen, indicate the man was tortured,” it said, adding that the body also appeared to have undergone an autopsy using “Western methods”.
It said the man was a married father of seven, including seven-month-old twins.
Employees of the Iraqi medical examination institute in Baghdad told Spiegel TV that they had seen other torture victims among the corpses handed over to them by the International Committee of the Red Cross on behalf of the US military. Spiegel TV said that Iraqi coroners were told not to conduct an autopsy if an American death certificate was provided, even if the cause of death appeared not to correspond to the injuries.
Prisoners released from Iraq’s infamous Abu Ghraib prison yesterday complained of being hung by their hands from walls for hours and humiliated by grinning American guards.
One prisoner said two American soldiers had sex in front of him in the complex’s hospital wing and another said he saw wires attached to the tongue and genitals of a cousin who was also being held.
The former inmates were part of a batch of 293 prisoners freed from the jail at the centre of the prisoner abuse scandal, a day after a visit by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Some 315 detainees were due to be released, but US Brigadier-General Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of military operations, told a Baghdad news conference later that only 293 had been bussed out yesterday.
The remaining 22 would be freed on May 21, along with 475 others, he said.
The morning’s first busload of prisoners left the complex, west of Baghdad, and drove past about 100 people waiting outside without stopping, according to an AFP correspondent.
The bus, flanked by US jeeps, arrived 30 minutes later at a base of the US-trained paramilitary Iraqi Civil Defence Corps (ICDC) at Al Amiriya on the western outskirts of Baghdad, where some of the detainees were set free. Other busloads were taken elsewhere in the country.
Speaking to reporters after he got off of the bus at Al Amiriya, Abu Mustafa, 24, said he was arrested 10 months ago by US forces who accused him of being a leader of a terrorist group.
“They kept me in solitary confinement for six days,” he said.
“They hung me by my hands from the wall for five hours.
“One day when I was in the hospital, a soldier came in and asked if I was a Muslim and then started having sex with another (female) soldier right in front of me.”
Mohammed Zadian, 45, said he was detained for four months and also hung from a wall by his hands for hours while he was “asked to confess that I attacked the American forces”.
He added: “I saw them attach electric wires to the tongue and the genitals of my cousin. They also used to give me a box of food and made me carry it around for six hours without putting it down.”
Mohammed Khazal Al Moussawi, 31, who was held for eight months, said he went into the prison weighing 117kg and came out more than 30kg lighter.
“One of the soldiers told the prisoners that if it was in his hands, he would kill all the Iraqis,” he said.
Another man, Muthani Mahmoud Salim, 25, from Baghdad, said they would target sheikhs being held. “They used to dress them like woman and tour the prison and the soldiers used to laugh and joke at them,” he said.
The allegations could not be independently verified.
The US-led coalition has embarked on a prisoner release policy to try to reduce numbers by half to fewer than 2,000, according to officials.
Photographs showing violent and sexual abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib have shocked the world and prompted calls for US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to take responsibility by resigning.
On a snap visit here on Thursday, Rumsfeld toured the prison and admitted that the humiliation of some of the detainees held since the start of the March 2003 invasion had dealt a major blow to his country.
Abu Ghraib, some 32km west of Baghdad, was where thousands of political prisoners were tortured and executed under former dictator Saddam Hussein. — AFP |
This work is in the public domain |
