‘Abu Ghraib is training camp for resistance’

Haj Ali al-Qaysi

Following is a shortened version of an article by Lars Akerhaug, board member of the Committee for a Free Iraq in Norway, that has been published in Europe in several languages. It is based on an interview with former Abu Ghraib prisoner Haj Ali al-Qaysi. Not many people would know this Iraqi man by his name, but millions would recognize his photograph, his head in a hood, wearing a black robe, his arms straight out, with electric wires attached.

Before U.S. occupation forces imprisoned him, Haj Ali worked as a mukhtar or village chief in the Abu Ghraib district. He lectured in mosques; harvested dates and ran a parking lot next to the local mosque. Haj Ali clashed with the U.S. forces when they tried to dump chemicals, body parts and pornography on some empty land he had converted into a playground for Iraqi children.

He was arrested on Oct. 30, 2003. He met with a Captain Phillips, who said, “I don’t know which agency has asked for your arrest, but you’ll be held here.”

On the morning of the third day of his detention, he was transported with a bag over his head to the infamous Abu Ghraib prison. “Of course, at that time, I did not know where I was,” Haj Ali says. “Before entering the prison I was inspected in a very humiliating procedure” involving fingerprints, eye scans and tissue samples.

Haj Ali describes the tortures he and the other prisoners were subjected to, including sexual humiliations, deprivation of food and light, lack of sleep, being held in horribly painful positions and constant threats. For example, once he was put against a wall and his hands tied to a doorframe in upright position. “Of course, again they beat me, poured urine and dirty water on me, wrote on me, pulled an empty gun at me, used a loudspeaker to swear in my ear and clicked the handcuffs in my ear. I stayed like this until the call for morning prayer.”

The female prisoners were hostages for brothers or fathers or sons. “We could hear their screams and do nothing but shout Allahu Akbar! (God is great!).” One of his friends asked one of the female U.S. soldiers, “Why do you humiliate us?” She answered, were the orders, to humiliate the prisoners in this situation.”

Haj Ali says that these prison camps are in fact training camps for the Iraqi Resistance. “Ninety percent of those arrested were usually innocent, but once they get out they are fully ready to start armed resistance against the occupiers. Anyone being treated like this or who sees his brother or sister being treated like this would be ready.”

Cell-phone cameras and torture

Once he was taken to the interrogation room, where there were 10 people inside, some in military and some in civilian clothes. They had telephones with cameras. “At that time I did not think this was possible, and thought they used the phones for recording sound or something,” says Ali. In this room the incident took place that later was screened around the world as an example of the torture practiced by the U.S. regime.

“They made me stand on a box with a robe on my head and arms straight out in the air. They told me they would give me electric shocks. I did not believe them. Then they took two wires and stuck them into my body. I felt like my eyeballs were falling out. Then I fell to the ground.”

During this torture he bit his tongue. The doctor came and with his shoe pushed Haj Ali’s head cover away and put water on it. “He saw no cut on the tongue” says Haj Ali, “so he told them to continue.” “Usually,” says Ali, “the doctors were part of the torture process. They would say if prisoners faked or exaggerated pains, tell ing the interrogators to go ahead.”

Three times they took him to this room and administered electric shocks to him five times. They tied his hands and head to a tube in the ceiling and stuffed some dry bread in his mouth. They took some photographs of him, and then continued with more interrogation. During the questioning they would ask him, “What would you think of more torture?” Haj Ali would answer that “The more you torture us, the greater that God will reward us.”

“What I later understood,” says Haj Ali, “was that what I was going through was part of an operation called ‘Iron Horse,’ aimed at collecting influential people, tribal leaders etc. to work for the occupation.” Haj Ali refused to go along with this, telling his interrogators, “If you define yourself as occupiers, then resisting the occupation force is preserved in Islamic as well as international law.”

Haj Ali al-Qaysi, now trained by the United Nations to work on human rights issues, will tell his story at an internation al conference in Rome on Oct. 2. The full article is posted at www.iacenter.org.