By Wijhat Nadhar
12 December, 2012
Courtesy: Countercurrents.org
When women in Iraq are arrested, they
routinely go through three gruesome phases, starting with humiliation, followed
by torture, and often ending with rape. I have received disturbing information
from two different, well informed sources: one from qualified social workers in
Al-Kadimiyah Women Prison, the other from three national guards officers who
worked in the prison.
The common procedure is as follows:
During the Arrest
The torture journey starts when security forces raid and search
the houses, through random raids or ordered raids. The Fourth Commander of the
Second Brigade – Team 6, Major Jumaa Al-Musawi, has confirmed this information.
This man has a criminal record, and he was assigned to this position by the
American Forces during their first training courses in intelligence gathering.
He used to live in Al-Thawra (now called Sadr City) / Sector 87. In his own
words:
“When we receive the raid and search orders from the Brigade
Intelligence, we usually start with a little party and drink alcohol, or take
some drugs. We choose the most cruel soldiers to carry out such operations. The
first thing we do is to lock the men and youngsters in a room, and the women
and children in another room. We start to steal what can be taken fast, like
jewelry, and we mess up the house, like throwing the women’s underwear here and
there; some soldiers even steal some of this underwear. After that, we start to
do a body search on the women, and having fun touching their private parts or
breasts. We threaten them to arrest the men in the house when they refuse to be
touched. If those women are pretty, we usually rape them immediately, and leave
the house when we find no weapons or incriminating material. In case we find
some weapons, every man and youngster in the house will be arrested, and if
there are no men at home, we arrest all the women instead. This is totally
according to the orders we receive.”
What follows is one of many stories about the crimes committed
by these corrupt creatures, who shamelessly brag about their misdeeds to each
other. Al-Musawi and his assistant Lt. Rafid Al-Darraji (another criminal who
was imprisoned in Abu-Ghraib and sentenced to death, but was released by the
Americans, using him as a guardian, along with their own guard dogs, giving him
the Lt. rank. He used to live in Al-Nuariyah District. Here is what they state:
“In July 2006, we received an order to raid and search the
house of one of the fabric merchants in Karradah (his name is not mentioned).
When we reached his house at 1:00 a.m., we didn’t find the man, we only found
his wife and his 17 year old son. During the search we found a rifle, which -
according to our law - is permitted for the personal protection of civilians.
But we threatened the woman that we would arrest her son if she didn’t let us
rape her. So, we handcuffed the son and locked him in a room, and one soldier
after the other raped the lady in the other room. The other soldiers stole what
they could find, then we headed to a well-known brothel in Al-Doura District in
Um Alaa’s house to enjoy the rest of the night there.”
They continue: “The first thing we do when an arrested woman is
being transported to the detention location, is that every part of her body is
touched by all the soldiers in the vehicle, while using dirty language. When we
reach the detention facility, we leave her in the investigation room,
supervised by the intelligence officer and his assistants. They directly take
all her clothes off, blindfold her, handcuff her, then the intelligence officer
starts to rape her with his assistant. And later they ask her some questions:
if she’s guilty or innocent and so on. Then they blackmail her, saying that she
should be cooperative and give important information about the District where
she lives, otherwise they would distribute photos of her while she was naked
and being raped. They would accuse her of false charges if she would file a
complaint about harrassment and torture. If she receives a "guilty"
verdict, she usually stays in the same location for a period of one to three
months, in order to finish the procedures of her “case”, to be sent to the
headquarters. During these months, every single intelligence officer and
soldier in the Brigade will rape her. After that, she will be sent to Al
Tasfeerat Prison in Shaab Stadium, or to Al-Muthanna Airport Prison. Sometimes
the prisoner is transferred to the facility of the Chief Commander's Office in
the Green Zone, which is a cellar under the building of the Baghdad Operations
Headquarter, supervised by Major General Adnan Al-Musawi. This place is one of
the most dangerous, dirtiest prisons of Al-Maliki.
Al-Tasfeerat Prisons
This is the second stage of the unfair arrest journey. The
female detainee will be sent either to Shaab Stadium Prison or the notorious
Al-Muthanna Airport Prison. A group of the worst psychopaths in the government
is supervising these prisons, a corrupt committee of criminals of the Military
Intelligence, the Intelligence services of the Ministry of Interior, and an
Intelligence and Security Representative from the Chief Commander’s Office.
This management is appointed by the Iraqi Correction Office through the
Ministry of Justice. 45% of its employees are Al-Mahdi Militia members, 30%
from the Badr Organisation. The other 25% is divided among the other criminal
parties of the government.
This phase is considered as the most barbaric. The security
forces, prison guards and members of the prison management practice the most
terrible ways of torture, humiliation, profanation, deprivation, blackmailing
the prisoners, ethnic and sectarian and political discrimination, and raping
men and women without exception. Female prisoners are detained for very long
periods, without legitimate accusations or investigating their case. In
criminal Maliki’s jails, there are many women who were imprisoned for periods
between one year and six years, without any legal representation or procedures
regarding their case.
There are many examples of the immoral and brutal practices
being committed against female and male prisoners in Al-Tasfeerat Prisons. Some
officers from the Ministries of Interior and Defense, the Office of the Chief
of Command, and some partisan and criminal militia leaders visit these prisons,
and choose some detainees to be tortured for hours and raping them for
sectarian reasons. Some of the prisoners die as a result of this brutal
torture. Between 2008-2012 Al-Rasafah Tasfeerat Prison recorded the death of
more than 250 prisoners, among them 17 women. During the same period
Al-Muthanna Airport Prison recorded the death of 125 prisoners, among them
three women.
And these torture practices do not only take place in Al-Tasfeerat
Prisons, but in all the prisons supervised by the Ministry of Justice,
especially the Juveniles Prison, Al-Kadimiyah Women Prison, the notorious
Abu-Ghraib Prison, in addition to the secret prisons of Al-Maliki where no
accurate records are available about the male and female detainees who died
because of the brutal torture they faced there.
It’s worth mentioning that under Al Maliki’s rule, some
notorious high risk level prisoners - men and women alike- were released or
secretly smuggled out Al-Tasfeerat Prisons, after destroying all the documents
and papers related to their cases, on the orders of Ministers and VIPs in the
Ministries of Interior and Defense, and the Commanding Chief’s Office. Here are
some of prisoners who were “released”:
Radiyah Kadum Muhsin : she was one of the prominent leaders of
the Dawa Party, and was released after an order from Al-Maliki himself, and
under the supervision of his Intelligence and Security Consultant. She was
accused of leading one of the biggest human trafficking criminal gangs that
kidnap children and sell them, in addition to prostitution, seducing some
officers and government officials, and blackmailing them with their own
pornographic photos, or even eliminating them. She was also accused of drug dealing,
and forging official documents.
Adnan Abdulzahra Al-Aaraji: he is one of the prominent leaders
of the Mahdi Militia, and the head of one of the most notorious gangs known in
Iraqi history in terms of sadism, criminality and discrimination. He was arrested
by the Americans while he was trying to smuggle 5000 corpses of his victims to
Iran during the sectarian wars in 2006. Those corpses were sent to Iran in
three cooled vehicles for the sake of human organs trade. He was accused of
smuggling antiques, explosives, weapons, and drugs. We mentioned here only two
of the prisoners who were “released” from Al-Maliki prisons.
After The Trial
Here begins the real tragedy. After the arrest, the prisoner -
if she’s still alive - has physical wounds all over her body, having many
psychological problems because of the unfair trials and the terrible treatment
she faced during the time in prison, including torture and rape.
And here is another serious hardship the female prisoners are
facing inside the detention centres.
There are women in these prisons with criminal records,
convicted for various crimes. The prison supervisors use those inmates to bully
the arbitrarily detained, innocent female detainees, imprisoned for sectarian
reasons, because of false accusations or reports by secret informants. Those
inmates are scaring the arbitrarily detained, watching them, blackmailing them
through continuous attempts to find out things about their personal lives. Then
that information is used against these innocent women to break them
psychologically, through disinformation and lies about the families of those
innocent prisoners.
Various Ways of Torture of Iraqi Female Prisoners
1- Physical and Psychological Torture:
The prison supervisors use many different forms of physical and
psychological torture, which they learned from their Americans and the Iranians
supervisors. These methods include:
Taking off the clothes of the prisoners for more than two
hours, while insulting them.
Beating them hard with sticks, or kicking them hard in the
loins.
Electrical shocks in their breasts, loins and head.
Using all kinds of sexual harassment (we will not reveal more
details because of the extreme shameful nature).
Recurrent rape after midnight by the guards and other persons
who work in the prison, in the presence of the prison manager, because the rape
often happens in his room.
Those criminals: the prison manager and the other supervisors, continuously
repeat their disgusting acts. They invite other security officers from the
Ministries of Interior and Defense to participate in their savage orgies, that
always end in rape of the prisoners.
I will mention only one incident I witnessed in Al-Kadimiyah
Prison in 2008 and can be confirmed by a social assistant who works there:
In one of the secret prisons of Al-Maliki in the Green Zone,
there was a prisoner named A.A.Al-Zaidi. He was a Police Colonel before, and
also held a position in the Intelligence Dept of the Badr Org., known as one of
the terrorist extremist militias. His task was to assist the Commander of the
Iranian Revolutionary Guards in getting information, names and addresses of
security and intelligence officers from Saddam’s regime, so that the Iranian
Revolutionary Guards could find them and eliminate them. His wife was helping
him too, along with her cousin who is a lieutenant in the Ministry of Interior
Special Commandos, called Sayid Jalal Al-Magsoosi.
A.A.Al-Zaidi was also responsible for recruiting women to carry
out suicide attacks in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Sunni areas in Iraq, especially
Diyala and Baghdad. He was arrested by the American Forces while he was trying
to illegally enter Jordan with his wife and other three women, carrying spying
equipments. His wife and the three women were put in Al-Kadimiyah Prison, but
he was taken to Al-Maliki’s secret prison in the Green Zone.
On New Year's Eve, while the intelligence officers and some
interrogators were partying and drinking in the prison, they told one of the
guards to bring A.A.Al-Zaidi. The prisoner entered and the drunken officers
asked whether he wanted to talk to his wife on the phone. They phoned the
manager of Al-Kadimiyah Prison, asking him to bring the prisoner’s wife. The
two talked on the phone, and the prisoner was taken to his cell again.
After that, the chief interrogator talked to the wife and said:
“we want to party with you and five other pretty friends of yours. We will be
coming within an hour to the women prison, so you should all be ready. You will
be five and we are six. The prison manager prepared a room for them, and all
the prisoners were raped many times by the officers and two of the prison
guards. While they were partying and raping the women, they cheered: “hail to
Al-Maliki, the pimp, the liar, the thief of Baghdad!”
2- Deprivation:
This word does not accurately describe the dire situation of
the women in prisons who are devoid from the simplest rights and needs, like;
Deprivation of family visits, phone calls, and all kinds of
contact.
Deprivation of health services, health care, and other sanitary needs.
Deprivation of legal rights, no authorization to see or consult a lawyer.
Deprivation of regular exposure to sunlight, and having no detergents or
necessary disinfectants.
Deprivation of complaining to the concerned committees, prisoners are
threatened that they should not complain to those committees or else... And
even if the prisoners file a complaint, no one will ever listen, because those
committees will hear the complaints and then neglect them.
3- Blackmail and Terrorization:
Female prisoners often receive threats that their family
members will be arrested and false accusations are made against the families of
the prisoners. The prisoner has to pay a huge amount of money and has to beg to
make a phone call to her family. Those who have not enough money can sell their
bodies to make a phone call.
This is just a brief account of what is happening in the women
prisons. Baghdad alone has more than 3000 women imprisoned. The prisoners are
distributed among the following jails:
Al-Kadimiyah Prison
Al-Tasfeerat Prison in Shaab Stadium.
Al-Muthanna Airport Prison.
Al-Baladiyyat Prison.
Al-Rustumiyah Prison.
There’s another secret prison supervised by the Chief
Commander’s Office, containing 65 imprisoned women. The site of this prison is
changed regularly. in addition to these prisons other small detention centres
are located in different security and intelligence operations headquarters.
Translation from Arabic: Lubna Al Rudaini
Editing: Dirk Adriaensens
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