‘We were tortured and sexually abused’
(Malaysian Mirror) – Rape and abuse of women and children by US troops were almost a daily affair at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, while continuous torture, sexual degradation, forced drugging and religious persecution were also normal occurrences at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.
Stories of these atrocities were told before a commission headed by Dr Mahathir Mohamad on the sidelines of a three-day international conference to criminalise war, organized by the Perdana Global Peace Organisation at the Putra World trade Centre here on Friday.
The commission heard that whole families and children as young as nine-years-old were also subject to the tortures and sexual assaults at these camps.
Forced nudity and sexual abuse
Iraqi Jameela Abbas Hameedi, 54, said she was arrested in Baghdad in January 2004 with her entire family, allegedly for supporting and funding forces against the US invasion.
“The US army beat me with tubes and a plastic chair until it broke.
“A plastic shard entered my leg and caused a bad infection. I had to undergo surgery without any anaesthetic,” said Jameelah, who was also allegedly stripped to her underwear in a “black room” of the prison and bashed against a wall.
Her only daughter and a nephew were beaten and tortured naked for six months until Jameelah admitted that she supported the resistance, she claimed.
She also witnessed other abuses like sleep deprivation, forced stress positions, forced nudity, the use of dogs to scare and bite prisoners, death threats and sexual abuse.
Hands and feet chained
Ruhal Ahmad, a British Muslim, said he was detained for three years at the US-manned Guantanamo Bay prison.
He claimed that the youngest detainee he knew of was a nine-year-old boy who was also tortured like the rest.
Ruhal, 27, was detained in 2001 after he and three Pakistani Britons – Asif Iqbal, Shafiq Rasul and a friend known only as Monir – travelled to Pakistan for a wedding.
In a surge of idealism, they decided to see the situation in Afghanistan, which, being an al-Qaeda stronghold, was being bombed by US forces in retaliation for the Sept 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon.
Monir was lost in the chaos and the three others were captured by Northern Alliance fighters and handed over to the Americans, who transported them to Guantanamo Bay.
Ruhal continued: “I was interrogated hundreds of times by the FBI, CIA and the MI5.
“I was beaten and subjected to continuous torture, sexual degradation, forced drugging and religious persecution.”
With their hands and feet chained and in a foetal position on the floor, the three were accused of making a video of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.
The three – now known in the media as the ‘Tipton Three’ – were released in 2004 without being charged after they were forced to sign a paper to admit their involvement in making the video.
Held in windowless cellar
Another British Muslim, Moazzam Begg, 41, said moved by the plight of the Afghan people under the conservative Taliban regime, he went to Kabul with his wife and three young children in mid-2001 to start a school for basic education and to provide water pumps.
They fled to Islamabad in Pakistan when the allied forces attacked Afghanistan in October that year.
He was arrested in January 2002 by Pakistani police and the CIA, and held in a windowless cellar at the Bagram air base for nearly a year.
“The US government considered me an enemy combatant, and claimed that I had trained at al-Qaeda terrorist camps in Afghanistan.
“I was not charged with any crime or allowed to consult any legal counsel during that time,” said Moazzam, who was one of nine British Muslims held there.
In January 2005, he was released with three others, also without any charges produced against them.
The commission also heard the presentation from several other war crime victims, including 16-year-old Najwa J.A. Jalamna, from Jenin, Palestine; Abbas Abid, a survivor of the Fallujah massacre in Iraq; Ibrahim Mousawi, the editor-in-chief of the Al-Intiqad and Al-Manar TV of Lebanon and Palestinian peace activist Dr Walid Salah Al-Khatib.
Six-member panel
Malaysian lawyer Zainur Zakaria headed the six-member panel Friday that heard the experiences of the seven people who spoke of almost daily physical and emotional torture by the US military over alleged ties to al-Qaeda or the Taliban movement.
The hearings will be submitted to a tribunal set up by the Criminalise War Conference and War Crimes Tribunal 2009 spearheaded by Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
The former prime minister said the tribunal’s decision would be forwarded to the United Nations for further action.
