Testimony from an Abu Ghraib “hooded man”

The iconic “hooded man” in those shocking pictures from Abu Ghraib was also a man, not just an icon; and at least one of the men subjected to that form of torture is a very brave man, too. His name is Ali Sh. Abbas, and Faiza al-Araji has today posted on her blog his sworn testimony regarding the treatment he received while he was in US detention in Iraq in late 2003, including what happened to him in the torture chambers of Abu Ghraib.
I say he is brave because I know from my extensive work on issues of torture that (1) The intention of torturers is most often to break the independent personality of their victims, and that certainly appears to be the case in this instance; and (2) The specifics of many of the means of torture used in Abu Ghraib– as elsewhere in the long, sorry history of torture– were designed to humiliate the victim both at the time and subsequent to any possible later release, in order to make it much harder for that individual later to be bring him/herself to be able to speak openly about what had happened.
(See, for example, the recent case of bus driver Imad al-Kabir, in Egypt.)
That is why I say Mr. Abbas seems to be a brave man, because for a while now he has gone publicly on the record with his account of the extremely humiliating treatment he received, which included numerous acts of rape, enforced nudity, etc, in addition to the electrocuting– which he says did occur, though I believe the US military people charged in connection with the case had claimed that wiring up the prisoners was only a “show” for them, to make them talk…
The author of the affidavit on Faiza’s site seems to be the same person as the man in this NYT story from March 11, 2006, Ali Shalal Qaissi, who at that point claimed to be “the” iconic hooded prisoner from Abu Ghraib. I believe he is the same person– look at the photos in this Feb 7, 2007 blog post from the recent “Criminalizing War” conference held in Malaysia, which also features the testimony from Mr. Ali Sh. Abbas, and indeed reveals that that text was sworn as testimony in front of a Malaysian Commissioner of Oaths on, apparently, February 8, 2007. (I see a problem re the dating there? However, knowing the way that names get differently recorded in many Arab countries, I see no particular problem with the apparent “slipperiness” of this person’s name in various versions.)
I note that a few days after that March 2006 NYT story, the NYT ran a follow-up stating that “Military investigators had identified the man on the box as a different detainee who had described the episode in a sworn statement immediately after the photographs were discovered in January 2004, but then the man seemed to go silent.” In that story, Mr. Qaissi (Mr.Abbas) was reported as acknowledging that he was not the man in the specific, Penatgon-released photograph he had held up in a portrait that had accompanied the earlier NYT article. “But he and his lawyers maintain that he was photographed in a similar position and shocked with wires.”
The Pentagon maintains only one detainee was subjected to this treatment. Mr. Abbas claims that there was more than one.
The whole of Mr. Abbas’s sworn affidavit as posted on Faiza’s site should be read as widely as possible. (Be aware that some of the details he testifies to are extremely disturbing. You may need to think of a prayer of other self-care mechanism to help you during and after the reading.)
Many people in the human-rights community have been pushing for further prosecutions, including of people further up the chain of command, for the war crimes committed at Abu Ghraib. However I think it is equally important to pay attention to the victims/survivors of all such crimes and to do whatever we can to reinstate their humanity– including by listening and paying close attention to their testimony.
I therefore suggest that now that Mr. Abbas has shown himself willing to go as very publicly on the record as he did in Malaysia, the members of the U.S. Senate and House Armed Services Committees should be urged to contact him and any and other survivors of Abu Ghraib they can locate, with the following goals in mind:

A. to find a way to hear their testimony face-to-face or by videolink, whether in Jordan or elsewhere;
B. to probe any portions of that testimony further if they choose to do so (but to do this with the respect and sensitivity we should accord to any survivor of violent acts);
C. to use such testimonies to build a much fuller picture of what occurred in Abu Ghraib than the existing, very circumscribed record of court proceedings has allowed us; and
D. to start to design and run a program to provide compensation and post-trauma rehabiliation to all certified survivors of the torture rooms of Abu Ghraib and the other torture centers run by US government agencies in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

Anyway, here are some of the important parts of Mr. Abbas’s testimony:
He was arrested on October 13, 2003, and was transferred to Abu Ghraib two days later. Immediately, he was subjected to humiliation treatment:

The first thing they did to me was to make a physical examination of my body and abused me. [Sounds like an invasive rectal examination? ~HC] Together with other detainees, we were made to sit on the floor and were dragged to the interrogation room. This so called room is in fact a toilet (approximately 2m by 2m) and was flooded with water and human waste up to my heel level. I was asked to sit in the filthy water while the American interrogator stood outside the door, with the translator.
8. After the interrogation, I would be removed from the toilet, and before the next detainee is put into the toilet, the guards would urinate into the filthy water in front of the other detainees.

And then, note what the first question was:

9. The first question they asked me was, “Are you a Sunni or Shiia?” I answered that this is the first time I have been asked this question in my life. I was surprised by this question, as in Iraq there is no such distinction or difference. The American interrogator replied that I must answer directly the questions and not to reply outside the question. He then said that in Iraq there are Sunnis, Shiias and Kurds.

I find that intriguing. There are a number of possible (not mutually exclusive) motivations behind the interrogators’ insistence on that question. First, very likely, they did not even know the answer from the get-go; but being determined to categorize all Iraqi detainees according to their own evolving means of categorization they want to get this item clear on their records. Second, maybe they were also trying deliberately to strengthen the detainees’ degree of self-identification according to those categories?
Here is what then ensued:

11. When I answered that I am an Iraqi Muslim, the interrogator refused to accept my answer and charged me for the following offence:
(a) That I am anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic.
(b) I supported the resistance
(c) I instigated the people to oppose the occupation
(d) That I knew the location of Osama bin Ladin
I protested and said that Muslims and Jews descended from the same historical family. I said that I could not be in the resistance because I am a disabled person and have an injured hand.
12. The interrogator accused me that I had injured my hand while attacking the American soldiers.

Now, when the person who translated this affidavit wrote “charged me for the following offenses”, I am assuming these were not formal charges, but rather accusations made in the context of the interrogation. But look at that first accusation there. What on earth relationship does being “anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic” have to the confrontation between the US and the Iraqis inside Iraq?
Then we have this:

14. When I did not cooperate, the interrogator asked me whether I considered the American army as “liberator” or “occupier”. When I replied that they were occupiers, he lost his temper and threatened me. He told me that I would be sent to Guantanamo Bay where even animals would not be able to survive.

Here is a clear attempt at mind control and the destruction of Mr. Abbas’s freedom of thought and analysis, and therefore of his independent personality.
He was then taken to another part of Abu Ghraib called “Fiji Land”,:

Each sector had five tents and surrounded by barb wires. When I was removed from the truck, the soldiers marked my forehead with the words “Big Fish” in red. All the detainees in this camp are considered “Big Fish”. I was located in camp “B”.
18. The living conditions in the camp were very bad. Each tent would have 45 to 50 detainees and the space for each detainee measured only 30cm by 30cm. We had to wait for 2 to 3 hours just to go to the toilets. There was very little water. Each tent was given only 60 litres of water daily to be shared by the detainees. This water was used for drinking and washing and cleaning the wounds after the torture sessions. They would also make us to stand for long hours.
19. Sometimes, as a punishment, no food is given to us. When food is given, breakfast is at 5.00 am, lunch is at 8.00 am and dinner at 1.00 pm. During Ramadhan, they bring food twice daily, first at 12.00 midnight and the second is given during fasting time to make the detainees break the religious duty of fasting.
20. During my captivity in the camp, I was interrogated and tortured twice. Each time I was threatened that I would be sent to Guantanamo Bay prison. During this period, I heard from my fellow detainees that they were tortured by cigarette burns, injected with hallucinating chemicals and had their rectum inserted with various types of instruments, such as wooden sticks and pipes. They would return to the camp, bleeding profusely. Some had their bones broken.
21. In my camp, I saw detainees brought over from a secret prison which I came to know later as being housed in the “Arabian Oil Institute” building, situated in the north of Baghdad. These detainees were badly injured.

So he stayed a month in those conditions… Then this:

22. After one month and just before sunset my number was called and they put a bag over my head and my hands were tied behind my back. My legs were also tied. They then transferred me to a cell.
23. When I was brought to the cell, they asked me in Arabic to strip but when I refused, they tore my clothes and tied me up again. They then dragged me up a flight of stairs and when I could not move, they beat me repeatedly. When I reached the top of the stairs, they tied me to some steel bars. They then threw at me human waste and urinated on me.
24. Next, they put a gun to my head and said that they would execute me there. Another soldier would use a megaphone to shout at me using abusive words and to humiliate me. During this time, I could hear the screams of other detainees being tortured. This went on till the next morning.
25. In the morning, an Israeli stood in front of me and took the bag from my head and told me in Arabic that he was an Israeli had interrogated and tortured detainees in Palestine. He told me that when detainees would not cooperate, they would be killed. He asked me repeatedly for names of resistance fighters. I told him that I do not know any resistance fighters but he would not believe me, and continued to beat me.
26. This Israeli dressed in civilian clothes tortured me by inserting in turn first with a jagged wooden stick into my rectum and then with the barrel of a rifle. I was cut inside and bled profusely. During this time, when any guard walked past me, they would beat me. I had no food for 36 hours.
27. The next morning, the Israeli interrogator came to my cell and tied me to the grill of the cell and he then played the pop song, “By the Rivers of Babylon” by Pop Group Boney M, continuously until the next morning. The effect on me was that I lost my hearing, and I lost my mind. It was very painful and I lost consciousness. I only woke up when the Israeli guard poured water on my head and face. When I regain consciousness, he started beating me again and demanded that I tell him of the names of resistance fighters and what activities that I did against the American soldiers. When I told him that I did not know any resistance fighters, he kicked me many times.
28. I was kept in the cell without clothes for two weeks. During this time, an American guard by the name of “Grainer” accompanied by a Moroccan Jew called Idel Palm ( also known as Abu Hamid) came to my cell and asked me about my bandaged hand which was injured before I was arrested. I told him that I had an operation. He then pulled the bandage which stained with blood from my hand and in doing so, tore the skin and flesh from my hands. I was in great pain and when I asked him for some pain killers, he stepped on my hands and said “this is American pain killer” and laughed at me.
29. On the 15th day of detention, I was given a blanket. I was relieved that some comfort was given to me. As I had no clothes, I made a hole in the centre of the blanket by rubbing the blanket against the wall, and I was able to cover my body. This is how all the prisoners cover their bodies when they were given a blanket.
30. One day, a prisoner walked past my cell and told me that the interrogators want to speed up their investigation and would use more brutal methods of torture to get answers that they want from the prisoners. I was brought to the investigation room, after they put a bag over my head. When I entered the investigation room, they remove the bag from my head to let me see the electrical wires which was attached to an electrical wall socket. [It is a common interrogation technique to make victims see, understand, and dread what is about to come to them. ~HC]
31. Present in the room was the Moroccan Jew, Idel Palm, the Israeli interrogator, two Americans one known as “Davies” and the other “Federick” and two others. They all wore civilian clothes, except the Americans who wore army uniforms. Idel Palm told me in Arabic that unless I cooperated, this would be my last chance to stay alive. I told him that I do not know anything about the resistance. The bag was then placed over my head again, and left alone for a long time. During this time, I heard several screams and cries from detainees who were being tortured.
32. The interrogators returned and forcefully placed me on top of a carton box containing can food. They then connected the wires to my fingers and ordered me to stretch my hand out horizontally, and switched on the electric power. As the electric current entered my whole body, I felt as if my eyes were being forced out and sparks flying out. My teeth were clattering violently and my legs shaking violently as well. My whole body was shaking all over.
33. I was electrocuted on three separate sessions. On the first two sessions, I was electrocuted twice, each time lasting few minutes. On the last session, as I was being electrocuted, I accidentally bit my tongue and was bleeding from the mouth. They stop the electrocution and a doctor was called to attend to me. I was lying down on the floor. The doctor poured some water into my mouth and used his feet to force open my mouth. He then remarked, “There is nothing serious, continue!” Then he left the room. However, the guard stopped the electrocution as I was bleeding profusely from my mouth and blood was all over my blanket and body. But they continued to beat me. After some time, they stopped beating me and took me back to my cell.
34. Throughout the time of my torture, the interrogators would take photographs.
35. I was then left alone in my cell for 49 days. During this period of detention, they stopped torturing me. At the end of the 49th day, I was transferred back to the camp, in tent C and remained there for another 45 days. I was informed by a prisoner that he over heard some guards saying that I was wrongly arrested and that I would be released.
36. I was released in the beginning of March 2004. I was put into a truck and taken to a highway and then thrown out. A passing car stopped and took me home.

So: four and a half months’ detention, some of the most brutal and humiliating treatment one could imagine– and at the end of it all they judged he had been “wrongly arrested” and he was released without a word??
Can you imagine the treatment he would have been given if they had decided he had indeed been some kind of a ringleader?
This is how he ends:

37. As a result of this experience, I decided to establish an association to assist all torture victims, with the help of twelve other tortured victims.
38. I feel very sad that I have to remember and relive this horrible experience again and again, and I hope that the people will answer our call for help. God willing.
And I make this solemn declaration conscientiously believing the same to be true and by virtue of the provisions of the Statutory Declarations Act 1960 [of Malaysia].

Just a few last points from me. First, I believe it is very important to do some further probing into the role that Mr. Abbas alleges was played in his interrogation by all the other actors whom he identifies as present during the worst of the encounters, but especially by these three: the “Israeli interrogator”, the “Moroccan Jew”, and the “doctor.”
Was there really an Israeli interrogator participating in all those interrogations– or was this a ploy of deceit engaged in as a way to further terrorize the detainees? The citizens of both the US and Israel deserve to know this. (It is entirely possible it was one of the many US citizens who also carry Israeli citizenship and who may well have served in the Israeli security services.)
Was the Moroccan Jerw a citizen of Morocco and participating “on secondment” to the Americans from the Moroccan security services– services that, goodness only knows, have a long experience in doing torture? (Or maybe he was on secondment from the Israeli services?)
And the doctor??? What on earth kind of a doctor would agree to play that role of, essentially, assisting torture by helping to establish “medical” parameters for it? What kind of a doctor would behave in the way Mr. Abbas alleges that doctor acted?
Was it really a doctor, I wonder, i.e., someone who has taken an oath to “do no harm”? (There are a couple of other interesting, medical-related points in the testimony too, including the offers to “condition” treatment of Mr. Abbas’s hand on his provision of the information the interrogators sought.)
Secondly, I want to link back to this post I put up on JWN back in August 2005, in which I commented on the extremely important account that the pro-Algerian-independence French Communist Henri Alleg had written about his torture at the hands of the French Army in Algeria in 1957. That testimony was published as a little book, under the title “The Question“. I urged then that the existing English-language version of that book should be republished in full. Today I repeat that plea! In that JWN post I also copied out some of the introduction that Jean-Paul Sartre had written for Alleg’s book.
Alleg’s testimony of what he himself had suffered– including electrocution and a version of water-boarding– was bad enough. But he made sure to write that the treatment given to his fellow-detainees who did not have the “benefit” of French citizenship but were Algerian-Muslim indigenes of the country was far, far worse. (He also wrote very movingly about the degree of care his Muslim fellow-detainees would give to him after each of his torture sessions.)
Anyway, go read those portions of the Sartre text that I put in that post…
Thirdly, I want to thank Mr. Abbas for having agreed to put this testimony on the record, and to thank Faiza for getting it up onto the web. Mr. Abbas, Faiza, the organizers of the “Criminalizing War” conference in Malaysia, and any of the rest of us who seek to work further on this case should know that we may all be subjected to damaging personal attacks for any role we play in continuing to get this testimony better heard. I judge, however, that this testimony has a great degree of prima-facie credibility and deserves to be fully engaged with.
Including– directly– by members of the US Congress.