Abu Ghraib prison still haunts Iraqis

Abu Ghraib (Iraq)

From our special correspondent

Abou Ghraib, a million inhabitants, is built around its prison of 115 hectares. Its endless walls divide the city in two. An atmosphere of fear seems to reign in the dirty and deserted streets of this agricultural city, with a reputedly conservative population.

Between military forts, garrisons and checkpoints, the 20 kilometers that separate Baghdad from the central prison of Abu Ghraib are a series of walls surmounted by barbed wire and watchtowers where Iraqi soldiers are posted behind heavy machine guns.

At 50, Hassan Al Janaby, the former captain of Saddam Hussein’s guard, runs a discreet women’s cosmetics store in the bazaar, the only place in the city where there is a certain effervescence. The former faithful of the dictator says that “the American or Iraqi forces arrested between 100 and 150 young people every day in the city, with or without charges”. In fact, more than 70% of prisoners in Iraq were arbitrarily arrested under US occupation, according to a 2004 Red Cross report.

The prison would have counted “up to 80,000 prisoners at the time of the American occupation”, affirms Salim Habib, Iraqi researcher for the NGO AirWars. That is more than the prison population in France. Also an investigative journalist, Salim Habib has met many former detainees, scarred for life. “They hide what happened to them, they are ashamed,” he says. One of them confided to me: “When I walk past the prison, I lower my head. I don’t want to remember what happened to me here, just the name of Abu Ghraib gives me nightmares!” »

Ali Al Qaissi saw his photo go around the world when the Abu Ghraib torture scandal broke in April 2004. We see him standing on a box, arms outstretched, hanging from electric wires. He has a hood from which a trickle of blood escapes. Reached by Skype, the sexagenarian, a refugee in Berlin, testifies, sometimes on the verge of tears: “They held our heads under water until we thought we were drowning. Electric torture and rape were common. They would starve us or deprive us of sleep for days. »

Arrested for wanting to show journalists American abuses, “left naked for fifteen days”, Ali Al Qaissi would have undergone these “interrogations” for “sixty-eight days” before being released, almost a year later, without prosecution. The details of sexual abuse he reports are appalling. He swears to have seen “an Iraqi translator rape a child in front of his father” so that he signs a confession as well as an American soldier, since condemned, “to sodomize a detainee”.

Ali Al Qaissi adds: “Most of the former prisoners have physical or psychological problems, mental illnesses. Many have left Iraq, some have died…” Supported by the European Union and human rights NGOs, he founded the Association of Victims of American Occupation Prisons “for justice to be done and these acts are neither forgotten nor repeated”.

Returned under Iraqi control in 2006, then closed and reopened several times, the prison of Abou Ghraib would only welcome 5,000 prisoners, according to Salim Habib. But his image continues to haunt Iraqis. On the American side, only the director of the establishment was sidelined in 2004 and a few soldiers accused of torture were convicted. George W. Bush publicly asked for forgiveness. “Our biggest mistake is Abu Ghraib,” admitted the American president in 2006.

In fact, the torture, humiliation and sexual abuse inflicted on detainees by American soldiers and Iraqi mercenaries also paved the way for the most radicalized insurgent groups: Al-Qaeda in Iraq, then, years later, the Islamic State (Daesh).

---

Source

---