[Peace-discuss] prisoner abuse continuing

[Ricky Baldwin]

[Just got this chilling article from my friend in
Iraq.  Apparently the military hasn't reformed much
under recent pressures. - RB]


Specials > Iraq in Transition 
from the May 17, 2004 edition 

Iraqis, desperately seeking detainees, meet
frustration

By Annia Ciezadlo | Correspondent of The Christian
Science Monitor
 
BAGHDAD – She didn't want to be a troublemaker; she's
a US citizen, after all. So when American soldiers
came to Jeanan Moayad's house, looking for her father,
she cooperated. She showed them his medical records
and her own Texas birth certificate. Her father was in
Jordan, she told them, undergoing surgery. So they
took her husband instead. 

As far as she knows, her husband is not accused of any
crime. But Mrs. Moayad says US troops are holding him
as a human bargaining chip, telling her repeatedly
that they would detain her husband until her father
surrendered.

"My husband didn't do anything," says Moayad, a
35-year-old Iraqi architect who lived in Austin until
she was five. Her chin trembling, she digs a tiny
picture of him out of her purse, packed with documents
related to his case and photos of their three
children. Her husband, an architect named Dhafir
Ibrahim, smiles calmly out of the scalloped frame.
"He's a hostage!" she exclaims, her eyes filling with
tears.

"We repudiate that absolutely," says Capt . Mark
Doggett, a US military spokesman. "The coalition does
not take hostages. I don't have specifics on this
particular case, but I can tell you on principle that
we absolutely do not take hostages such as that lady
has described."

Amid a growing scandal over photographs of US soldiers
abusing detained Iraqis, US occupation officials
pledged last week that conditions had improved at Abu
Ghraib, where Mr. Ibrahim is being held, and in other
prisons in Iraq. "I will tell you that everything that
goes on in Abu Ghraib today is in accordance with our
procedures and policies," said Maj. Gen. Geoffrey
Miller, the new head of US-run prisons in Iraq, "and
is in compliance with the covenants of the Geneva
Convention."

But conversations with families of detainees, as well
as documents, suggest that coalition forces are still
holding Iraqis who have not been charged with any
crime. In a stinging 24-page report leaked last week,
the International Committee of the Red Cross quoted
military intelligence officers who estimated that
"between 70 percent and 90 percent" of the detainees
in Iraq were arrested "by mistake."

In some cases, occupation forces are even holding
people whom they know to be innocent - sometimes for
months after the US military itself has declared them
cleared of any crime. Weeks after the scandal began to
snowball, and 10 days after Miller's claim, they are
still holding them.

The Fourth Geneva Convention, which guarantees the
rights of civilians under military occupation, forbids
the use of "moral coercion" - such as holding
relatives - to get information. It also prohibits
punishing anyone for an offense he or she has not
personally committed.

And both the Geneva Convention and international human
rights law outlaw detaining people without speedy
hearings and procedures for appeal. "There is a
general prohibition against arbitrary incarceration,"
says John Quigley, an international law professor at
Ohio State University. "And if they're holding
somebody, they have some obligation to ascertain that
there is a need to hold that person."

A letter brings hope - but no action

Sometimes even fulfilling that obligation isn't
enough. On Jan. 10, American troops burst into the
Abdul-Razaq family home near Baquba and handcuffed
Wadhah Abdul-Razaq's brother Harith and two cousins.
According to a US military letter, an informant had
accused them of being in a terror cell. On March 18, a
soldier drove back and delivered an apology - and the
letter.

"All three of these men are innocent of the crimes
they are accused of committing," reads the letter,
signed by an American officer and dated March 15. (The
letter, of which the Monitor has a copy, also notes
that the accuser was now awaiting trial in an Iraqi
court for "false testimony.")

"You cannot imagine how happy we were," says Mr.
Abdul-Razaq, a chicken farmer. "We believed they would
truly fulfill their promises. We wanted to get in the
car and go straight to Basra at midnight. We thought
that if we took this piece of paper, we would be able
to release them."

Two months later, he is still trying. In the past four
months, Abdul-Razaq's brother has been moved from
Baquba to Tikrit, then to Abu Ghraib, and finally to
Umm Qasr, in the south. "We never saw such terror in
Iraq," says Abdul-Razaq's mother. "Not us, not our
fathers, not our brothers."

In the meantime, Abdul-Razaq got another letter, dated
April 22, restating his brother's innocence and asking
again for his release. It didn't help. While
Abdul-Razaq hopes his brother will come home
eventually, the family has been devastated by his
detention: To this day, his 3-year-old son, he says,
who saw his uncle arrested, is afraid to sleep alone.
Doggett said he could not comment on the case. "We're
getting buckets of requests about individual cases, so
we're not able to follow them up individually," he
sighs. "But there are a lot people due for release."
Inquiries Doggett passed on to the 1st Armored
Division were not answered by press time.

Alastair Hodgett, a spokesperson for Amnesty
International USA, in Washington, says Abdul-Razaq's
situation was not an isolated case. "Certainly the
Geneva Convention, but also just basic standards for
criminal procedure worldwide, would require that an
individual that has been cleared of any crime would be
released," he says. "And certainly there's no excuse
for keeping somebody against whom there are no
credible allegations. We've also documented cases of
individuals who were detained far beyond the point
where the allegations against them had proved to be
unfounded."

A knock in the night

Moayad's ordeal began Jan. 30 at 2:30 a.m., when two
Humvees pulled up to house.

The soldiers who came to her door asked for her
father, Moayad Abdullah, a 66-year-old geologist and a
Baath Party member. The family says they have no idea
why he was of interest to the coalition forces. They
didn't tell her what crime, if any, her father was
suspected of committing - common practice, according
to the Red Cross report.

"They told me it was because he was a Baathist," she
says. "They told me my father didn't do anything, but
they just wanted to know information about another
person."

When the troops learned her father was out of the
country, says Moayad, they arrested her husband. As
Moayad's mother began to cry, they promised to bring
him back the next day, saying they just wanted to ask
him a few questions.

For the next 18 days, Ibrahim was held at a Baghdad
detention facility. On Feb. 17, says Moayad, three
soldiers came to her house and gave her a letter in
her husband's handwriting. After greeting her and the
children with "peace and kisses," the letter says he
will be sent to Abu Ghraib "until the arrival of my
father-in-law."

"I'm going to be there in his place until he
surrenders himself," reads the letter. "Please tell
him that I am in his place and that I'll be released
when he arrives here, since I am not the wanted
person, as you know from all who spoke to you about my
case. Please inform my father-in-law to surrender
himself of his own free will, and that will make
things much easier for him. They don't mistreat
someone who surrenders of his own free will, but just
the opposite - they only want to ask him questions."

He apologizes for not being able to visit relatives
during the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, which she
celebrated alone two days after he was taken. "I send
my warm kisses to our pretty little ones, and I hope
that they are being loving, well-behaved, and doing
well in school," he writes. "Please tell them that I
am traveling for some time, and don't tell them
anything else."

Over the next three months, Moayad went to Abu Ghraib
18 times. Mostly, the soldiers there treated her well;
she remembers one in particular, a baby-faced young
doughboy who started to cry when she told him her
story. Like Dhafir, the soldier left an infant behind
as he deployed and will return to find a toddler.

"He told me that he is the same as me - he hasn't seen
his children for eight or nine months," she says,
biting her lip. "He was very sweet and kind."

Another soldier, moved by her story, looked up her
husband's name on the computer. But he told her he
couldn't do anything as her husband's name was marked
"intel value." The Red Cross report describes a
pattern of severe abuses against Iraqis deemed to have
an "intelligence value," ranging from physical abuse
to "psychological coercion" like threats of execution.

Experts in international law say that arresting one
person to put pressure on others amounts to "moral
coercion." "It's clearly an abuse of the powers of
arrest to arrest one person and say that you're going
to hold him until he gives information about somebody
else, especially a close relative," says Quigley.
"Arrests are supposed to be based on suspicion that
the person has committed some offense."

Coalition authorities, while refusing to speak to the
specifics of Ibrahim's case, denied that they would
ever detain one person as a means of pressuring
another. But last November, coalition forces detained
the wife and daughter of Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, one
of Saddam Hussein's top deputies. After Hussein's
capture last year, Mr. Douri became the most wanted
Iraqi official. His wife and daughter remain in US
custody, though they have not been charged.

Human rights monitors have accused the US military of
committing a war crime by arresting Douri's wife and
daughter. "Taking hostages is a grave breach of the
Geneva Conventions - in other words, a war crime,"
warned Human Rights Watch in a Jan. 12 letter to
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Finally, a visit in the prison

Last Friday, US authorities released more than 300
prisoners from Abu Ghraib, and pledged to release
hundreds more in coming weeks. Moayad waited at home
all day, hoping her husband would walk through the
door. He didn't. But the next day, May 15, she finally
got to visit her husband in Abu Ghraib.

He told her to disregard the letter, and confirmed her
suspicion that prison authorities forced him to write
it. "He said they are treating him very well, very
good, thanks be to God," she says, her voice shaking
with relief.

Moayad doesn't blame America - "my first country" -
for the months of living without her husband, or the
job that he lost, or the time he missed with his
children. She doesn't even hold a grudge for the night
when his family came over and shouted at her, blaming
her and her father for his detention.

But she does want the American public to know what is
happening, and what she has endured over the past
several months. "I think American citizens - as a
country, not as soldiers - are very kind, very
compassionate," she says. "And I'm sure they don't
like what is going on."

###


	
		
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! - Internet access at a great low price.
http://promo.yahoo.com/sbc/