Ali Shalal Abbas was lives in the Al-Amiriyah district of Baghdad. So many of his neighbors were detained that friends urged him to go to the nearby US base to try to get answers. Since he worked for civil administration, he went three times to get answers as to why so many innocent people were being detained during US home raids.
On the fourth time he was detained himself, despite not being charged with any crime. This was September 13th, 2003. Within two days he was transferred from a military base to Abu Ghraib, where he was held for over three months.
“The minute I got there, the suffering began,” said Abbas, “I asked him for water, and he said after the investigation I would get some. He accused me of so many things and asked me so many questions. Among them he said I hated Christians.”
He was forced to strip naked shortly after arriving, and remained that way for most of his stay in the prison. “My hands were enlarged because there was no blood because they cuffed them so tight. My head was covered with the sack, and they fastened my right hand to a pole with handcuffs. They made me stand on my toes to clip me to it.”
Abbas said soldiers doused him in cold water while holding him under a fan, and oftentimes, “They put on a loudspeaker, put the speakers on my ears and said, “Shut Up, **** **** ****!”
Treatment included holding a loaded gun to his head to make him not cry out in pain as his hand-ties were tightened.
He was not provided water and food for extended periods of time. Sleep deprivation via the aforementioned method was the norm.
Abbas said that at one point, “Two men came, one a foreigner and one a translator. He asked me who I was. I said I’m a human being. They told me, ‘We are going to cut your head off and send you to hell, we will take you to Guantanamo.’”
A female soldier told him, “Our aim is to put you in hell so you would tell the truth. These are the orders we have from our superiors, to turn your lives into hell.”
Another time one of the guards said it was time for “celebrations.”
“They made some of the detainees strip naked and threw cold water on them,” said Abbas, “And made them run and smash their faces against the walls while the guard was whistling.”
Other treatment included, as Abbas added, “They put us on top of each other while we were naked. They made us lay on top of each other naked as if it was sex, and beat us with a broom.”
A female guard told the male detainees that the penis of a dog was longer than theirs, and for Abbas and several other detainees she made them strip naked, tied their hands tightly behind their backs, threw them on the ground, and made them say, ‘I am a donkey’ over and over while they were forced to lick the ground.
Other treatment included having their food thrown in the trash in front of them and beating them on their genitals. Abbas added, “They **** on us, used dogs against us, used electricity and starved us.
He also said, “They cut my hair into strips like an Indian. They cut my mustache, put a plate in my hand, and made me go beg from the prisoners, as if I was a beggar.”
Desecration of his religion was, of course, included as part of their humiliation.
Abbas was made to fast during the first day of Eid, the breaking of the fast of Ramadan, which is haram (forbidden).
He told me that one day a female soldier stripped naked and other soldiers held his eyes open to make him look at her. Sometimes at night when he would read his Koran, he had to hold it in the hallway for light. “Soldiers would walk by and kick the Holy Koran, and sometimes they would try to **** on it or wipe **** on it.”
