Monday, May 03, 2004
Nearly two months after his release from prison, Muwaffaq Abbas's eye is still black and swollen from the blow he says he received from an American gun the night in March that soldiers broke into his Baghdad home and arrested him on suspicion of involvement in the insurgency against the US-led occupation of Iraq.
They pulled a hood over his face, pinned his arms in plastic cuffs behind his back and took him, his 65-year-old father - a retired army officer - and three brothers to Baghdad airport. For the next nine days, he remained hooded and cuffed, confined to a wooden packing case in a hangar. He was kicked if he fell asleep, he says, particularly by one soldier who aimed for his wound.
There is no way to verify independently Mr Abbas's account. But for over a year, human rights organisations have used similar personal testimonies to draw the coalition's attention to allegations of abuse.
Only after CBS, the US television channel, last week broadcast graphic images of mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison - to which Mr Abbas's brothers were subsequently transferred - have US officials responded to allegations of abuse.
"The allegations are not new. What's new is the proof," says Mohammed al-Moussawi, deputy head of the Iraqi Human Rights Organisation. "The coalition does not accept testimonies."
Senior military figures have echoed the "deep disgust" expressed by US President George W. Bush at the treatment shown, and rejected suggestions the abuse was systematic or widespread. Following last week's broadcasts, the US military said that six soldiers - including a brigadier general - would face a court-martial in Iraq.
Notorious as a torture centre under Saddam Hussein, the Abu Ghraib prison is now the US's largest detention camp in Iraq. In the past year, tens of thousands of Iraqis have passed through its gates.
"Don't the soldiers realise that maltreating Iraqis is creating enemies and spawning terrorism?" asks Mr Abbas, who insists he had nothing to do with the insurgency and was denounced as a result of a personal grudge.
But anger at the images is tempered by the memory of Mr Hussein's rule. Fathers had to pay for the bullets used to kill their sons in police stations, and families were warned not to mourn.
Major Edna Nogueras, who runs the coalition's Baghdad Assistance Centre, a liaison office that helps put relatives in touch with their missing, said Abu Ghraib was preparing to open a visitors' centre, and had cut the registration time for detainees from weeks to days. In recent weeks, she added, thousands had been released, reducing the number from near 9,000 to just over 7,000.
An Iraqi employee at the centre said her unit had processed many complaints for damage to property, but had yet to investigate an allegation of torture. "Plenty of times I got complaints from families," she said. "But . . . the response I got from my unit was 'They are just trying to spoil the image of the coalition. Detainees are always treated humanely.' " Iraq crisis, Page 17
By NICOLAS PELHAM
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