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Umm Qasr where approximately 10,000 prisoners were held. Civilian
prisoners were separated from combatants. At first they were held in an
area which consisted of 15 compounds, each compound holding around 500
prisoners. "They give you one blanket, but it's not enough. We did not
cover ourselves with the blanket, we used it as a mat," said Fadi.

"There was no place for us to stay in the big tent," he continued, "so we
built
our own tent by sticks. I asked for a stick from a guard who was outside the
fence. He didn't respond, so I asked, `Why don't you answer me?' He said,
`You are my enemy. I don't have to speak with you.' I asked, `Who said I
am your enemy?' He said, `If you say one more word, I will kill you.'"

After initial processing in the large compound they were moved to a second
part of the prison called "Bucca," named after a fireman who was killed at
The World Trade Center.

"There was a picture of the twin towers in front of the prison," said Jihad,
"just to make the soldiers feel they are doing the right thing, just to make
them feel it is in the right way."

Fadi and Jihad particularly detested the way their captors treated the
children
who were imprisoned with them. "There were 13 year old kids in with us,"
Fadi said. "Sometimes they would throw candies from their humvees,
shouting `Bark like a dog, and I'll throw you the candy'..Some of the
small children were crying in the night, asking to go home to their
families. We were trying to get them quiet."

"Some of the prisoners were criminals, thieves. They put the children with
them. Some of them tried to abuse children. We told the guards, they started
laughing."

"One prisoner tried to rape a kid and he refused, so they made a cut on his
face."

Occasionally, Fadi and Jihad would refuse to take their food because of
the way soldiers in "The Feeding Team" taunted them. "Say that you love
Bush and I will give you food," a soldier would say, before handing them a
bowl. "I told them, `I don't love Bush. I don't love Saddam, I love only
myself,'" said Fadi, but a person has to have some honor. Telling them to
keep the food, Fadi added, "Let me go and I will cook my own food.'"

Fadi and Jihad tried to speak up on behalf of other prisoners. "They
called us
'the two troublemakers' because we were the only two that spoke English in
the whole compound.

"After seven days we tried to make our demands more organized. We didn't
ask anything about our legal situation because when we asked them they
said it is not our responsibility, so we started trying to make our living
conditions
better."

"We were asking for enough food, potable water, water for washing
ourselves,-- skin diseases are contagious one from another. We were asking
for more medical support. Many people had to make a dressing change. Many
had to take injections."

They refused all our demands."

Sensing that some of the soldiers would be aware of Fadi's and Jihad's
strength
of character, we asked if they ever encountered some sensitivity on the
part of
the soldiers. "Seldom would you find someone with feeling," was Fadi's
response. "Maybe the girls, they would have more feelings than men, but even
they kept on laughing when they'd see someone injured or in pain."

"The US soldiers are young, in their twenties, I don't believe that any
one of
them will feel regret. Most of them were saying, `If you do any wrong thing
I
will kill you.' Most of them don't have feelings, any kind of feelings. They
just do what they are told to do."

"They don't care," Jihad added. "One soldier was in a truck and she
pointed at
the American flag and she said, `This is your flag.'"

When they were finally brought before a tribunal, interrogators asked them
if
they had any information about weapons of mass destruction or if they knew
the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein. The judge at the tribunal, a military
officer, determined that they should be released from administrative
detention. Soldiers drove them to Basra, the nearest large city, gave them
each five dollars, and set them free.

Now "the troublemakers" are deeply troubled by the fate of their four
companions who are still imprisoned at Umm Qasr, "guilty" of being
Palestinians.

Kathy Kelly
Voices in the Wilderness
www.vitw.org   www.electroniciraq.net

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The Iraq Solidarity Project is a Montreal-based grassroots initiative to
help provide international monitoring of occupation forces and the
corporate
reconstruction of Iraq and protective accompaniment to Iraqis under the
occupation.