The Spectre of Abu Ghraib


R: “So here is American democracy.”


Ex-detainee no. 151716 from the ‘Jail of Shame’ speaks - the man appearing in the photo/symbol of the violence in Abu Ghraib, the hooded prisoner with outspread arms connected to electric wires. Forty-two-year-old Ali Shalal el Kaissi was arrested in October 2003 in Baghdad on the charge of participating in the guerrilla. He denounced the torture to the Iraqi authorities, but no one believed him before the photos of the horror were published. Ali, a scholar and a religion teacher, was a Mokhtar, an authority in one Baghdad district. He was scheduled to come to Italy to tell his story but the Italian consulate denied him a visa. We met him in Amman, Jordan, where he founded the Association for the Victims of American Prisons. At Abu Ghraib, Ali was called Clawman, contemptuous slang referring to a deep wound on his hand.


Speaker :

5.24.00
Before being arrested, I had had surgery on my hand. But when I was in prison, the Americans used the wound as a way to pressure me. They told me, “If you collaborate, we can help you have an operation that will make your hand like new.” And instead, my hand was crushed!

D: What did they ask you during the interrogations?

“ (25.00) “They put me in a room full of excrement, as they did with others as well, and from the door they asked if I were Sunni or Shiite. (28. 50) Then they asked me if I were anti-Semitic – a question that shocked me: no one asks such questions in Iraq, even when you get married.

D: And then ?

(26.45) R: They asked me if I considered the Americans as occupiers or liberators. They asked me to help them / 33.27 “to point out the people who hated the Americans, and they also asked me to denounce the ones I disliked, saying they would do me the favor of eliminating them.

D: And did you ever respond ?

R:34.20” I never collaborated. I had nothing to answer. Others, under torture, named innocent people.”

D: What was the worst moment during your months in prison?

r: 30.20 “Just being at Abu Ghraib is already a form of torture! They stripped us naked, without being able to pray for entire days. They made me stand with my arms outstretched as if I were crucified. They put a pistol to my temples and yelled, ‘You’re dead!’ and shot into the air.... They took loud speakers, turned up the music, and put them near our ears and then wrote curse words on our bodies with a pen. (31.00) Each one of us had names written on his chest and his forehead. On me, they wrote Colin Powell. (31,10). They were continually stepping on my injured hand with their boots.”

D: The photo of you has been seen around the world. When did they put the hood over you and what type of abuses did you suffer in those moments...

35.25
“ After 15 days in prison, they took me out of the cell and put a blanket with holes over me, as if it were a traditional Arab robe. (37.01) They tied me with electric wire and placed a cardboard box nearby. Then they said they would give me electric shocks me if I didn’t collaborate, and for three days they did. The person who was torturing me spoke Arab very well. There was some background music when he came in, “By the Rivers of Babylon”. He said he used to work in Gaza and that he had made many people talk. Each time they used the electrodes, I felt like my eyes would come out of their orbits. (39.58) One shock was so strong that I bit my tongue and began to bleed. I almost fainted. They called a doctor who opened my mouth with his boots, saw that the blood was coming from my tongue and not from my stomach, and said, “Go on if you want”. (40.35)

D: Did you see other people being tortured?

43.30 R : “I was closed up in the prison for days on end. When I went out down the corridors, I saw people being tortured all the time.”

D: There was talk about photos showing sexual abuses that were not published out of decency...

44.10 (sighing) ….. R: A female soldier interrogated a cleric who was a prisoner. She asked him to have sex with her. When he refused, the woman came back wearing a fake phallus and raped him..

(45.30) : They pulled the beard of another cleric, a 75-year-old man, forced him to take off his clothes and put on women’s clothes. Then they made him dance.
I think that the increase in the number of attacks in Iraq is due in part to what happened in the Iraqi prisons.

D: There were also women at Abu Ghraib..

(48.08) “When they entered homes and failed to find the men they were looking for, they took their women.”

D: Were they also abused?

(49.15) : “We heard women brought into the prison who were raped, screaming and calling for our help, but the only thing we could do was yell, ‘God is great and He will triumph’. Other times they made totally naked prisoners take the food in to the women.

D: Do you remember the names of the torturers?

(52.40) I remember the names of the guards: Graner who wore glasses, Frederik, David, Sneider...he was the one who tortured the women. Then there was Angela, a woman ( 53,25) (53,35)… but we don’t know the names of the ones who came to interrogate us. Graner was the one who crushed my hand (54.39) Graner was very fat and had a tattoo of a snake... (55.45) The people who were tortured were then photographed as if they were stars. When the soldiers’ had their girls with them, they made us come out and pose in strange positions while they took pictures.

D: Have you ever heard testimony of abuses committed by Italians?

R 1.25: All the jails in Iraq are under American control. Two private companies, Caci International and Titan Corp. had contracts with mercenaries of various nationalities who were responsible for getting information from the prisoners.

… ( 2.45) An Iraqi diplomat who was arrested, Haitham Abu Ghaith, spoke many languages, including Italian. This man told me that he had heard two of the men interrogating him speaking Italian... (4.34)

D: And what types of torture did he say he suffered?


6’00 R: “Every type of torture. The same done by the Americans were also done by Italian contractors.”

(10.00) But the most scandalous thing of the Italians is that they stole money and archeological pieces. (12.00) We love the Italian people. We know the difference between civilians and those who do things like this, but that does not stop us from denouncing what the Italians did. The message I want to give to the Italian people is that the situation has definitely not improved in Iraq and nothing has been rebuilt.”