Phillip Robertson wrote a "disturbing" story in Salon about one Iraqi civilian's experience with America's widespread torture program. Excerpts:
| May 8, 2004 | BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Last Saturday, Suhaib Badr al Baz, a cameraman for Al-Jazeera, sat in the lobby of the Swan Lake Hotel and calmly described his experience being tortured by U.S. military personnel. The soft-spoken journalist's account of his 74 days in U.S. custody was deeply disturbing, and his story not only supports what is now coming to light about human rights violations in Abu Ghraib, but also adds interesting new details. Al Baz said that much of his mistreatment took place in a building at the Baghdad airport, a place where he heard the sounds of prisoners screaming for long periods of time. If his account is accurate, it means that the abuse of prisoners in Iraq is not limited to Abu Ghraib prison or a single military unit. It may well be, as military critics argue, more widespread.
Like many other prisoners of Abu Ghraib, al Baz was never charged with a crime and did not have the opportunity to defend himself before any court. As soon as he was arrested, he found himself plunged into a secretive network of American detention facilities with little connection to the outside world, a zone where human and civil rights were completely ignored. As a civilian in occupied Iraq, he should have been protected by the Geneva Conventions, but instead, al Baz became the victim of a war crime perpetrated by U.S. soldiers. Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention defines war crimes as: "Willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment ... Unlawful confinement of a protected person ... willfully depriving protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial." ....The cameraman's ordeal began Nov. 13 last year, when al Baz arrived at the site of a convoy attack in Samarra with his camera. U.S. soldiers stopped him and began to search his car. Al Baz said that when they found his Al-Jazeera I.D. badge, the soldiers asked him how he knew about the attack in advance, and then tied his hands behind his back. Al Baz says he arrived at the site four hours after the attack, and by that time, the entire city knew about it. Following his arrest, al Baz says that soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division took him to a U.S. military base in Samarra and interrogated him for two days. "At the base I first saw a tall heavy man who put a black hood over my head," he recalls. "Then he forced me to stand in front of a wall for three or four hours. I was treated very roughly, then taken to a room and interrogated. When the tall man was not satisfied with my answers, he hit me in the face. They asked questions in a way that showed they were not interested in the truth." Al Baz says at first he was not given food or water, or allowed to pray. On the second day, he was given foul-smelling food. Immediately after his arrest, colleagues from the network and friends began to pressure the coalition for information but were told by Gen. Kimmit's staff that there was no information available. This is a common reply for people seeking information about recently detained people. Al Baz said it took a week for the military to issue him a prison I.D. number. ....When al Baz moved to Abu Ghraib in late November, he said he was asked to strip naked at one point but was never forced to take part in staged scenes like the others. "It didn't happen like that to me," he said. But he did say that he witnessed a disturbing episode involving a father and son. From his cell, al Baz said he watched through the small window and saw two men stripped naked. "The boy was only about 16 years old, and then a soldier poured cold water over them. Their cell was directly across from mine." Al Baz says that the father and son were made to stand naked in front of other prisoners for days. Torturers often keep careful records; that is one of the odd but persistent features of the trade. It is never enough to destroy the captive -- there must also be proof of the victory over him, a souvenir. It is the prideful documentary urge that has undone the torturers of Abu Ghraib, although it is unlikely that the officers who sanctioned the abuse appear in the pictures. In any case, the Abu Ghraib prisoners were well aware that they were being photographed. "I first knew that they were taking pictures when I saw that one of the computers had a picture of some prisoners as its desktop background. One of the prisoners had a black hood over his head and he was covered in cold water. I personally witnessed this event take place. The man was screaming, "I'm innocent!" until he got sick and his body got swollen from all the punishment," al Baz said. Cold water, solitary confinement, swollen bodies and constant psychological abuse are recurring images for the Al-Jazeera cameraman, who also credits his tormentors with ingenuity. "They had all different kinds of punishments and they changed them all the time. I begged them to interrogate me again so they would know that I was innocent, but they said no, that's it. All we know is that you're staying here." .... |
Throughout my life I have come across people who have the personality to commit torture. There is a certain euphoria or adrenaline rush or whatever that some people experience when administering such cruel punishment. It's just the ultimate step in a sequence of personality development that starts with 9-year-old boys who obtain joy at smashing frogs against a wall just to see them splatter. You may call it inhuman, I call it a genetic trait yet to be erased by evolution.
Bush, Rumsfeld, etc. say that these American servicemen and contractors doing these "unspeakable acts" are "not America". Bullshit. These types of people are everywhere. We in America are no better. Live with it and resolve it. Denial will only perpetuate it.
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