Real Torture, Real Sex, Real Electrodes at US Prisons in Iraq

by Eric Jaffa

May 30, 2004

The prisoners of the US in Iraq weren't just forced to simulate sex with each other, but forced to have homosexual sex with each other.

The electrodes weren't only used to threaten prisoners, but to electrically shock prisoners.

News reports have misleadingly said that Iraqi prisoners were forced to simulate sex acts. For example, the passage below from Time Magazine, uses the term “simulating” (“The Scandal's Growing Stain,” May 17, 2004, bold added).

Haider Sabbar Abed al-Abbadi kept his shame to himself until the world saw him stripped naked, his head in a hood, a nude fellow prisoner kneeling before him simulating oral sex. " That is me," he claims to a Time reporter, as one of the lurid photographs of detained Iraqis suffering sexual humiliation at the hands of U.S. soldiers scrolls down a computer screen. "I felt a mouth close around my penis. It was only when they took the bag off my head that I saw it was my friend." In the nine months he spent in detention, al-Abbadi says he was never charged and never interrogated

The 1,600 photos which Senators and Congresspersons were allowed to view, but not the public, provide further evidence that prisoners were forced to have sex with each other ("Seattle Post Intelligencer," "New images 'disgust' Congress," May 13, 2004):

But the private images showed objects and behavior that were more graphic and diverse, including corpses, military dogs snarling at cowering prisoners, women commanded to expose their breasts, and sex acts, including forced homosexual sex.

Additionally, "the International Occupation Watch Centre, an NGO which gathers information on human rights abuses under coalition rule, said one former detainee has told of the alleged rape of her cellmate."

The forced sex between prisoners and rapes by guards, were real, not simulated.

The electrodes weren't just for show, either. They were used to electrically shock prisoners.

Amnesty International uses the term "war crimes" to describe the US treatment of Iraqi prisoners, writing:

Last July, the organization raised allegations of torture and ill-treatment of Iraqi detainees by US and Coalition forces in a memorandum to the US Government and Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq. The allegations included beatings, electric shocks, sleep deprivation, hooding, and prolonged forced standing and kneeling. It received no response nor any indication from the administration or the CPA that an investigation took place.

Saleh was an opponent of Saddam Hussein who was tortured over a decade ago at Abu Ghraib under Saddam's rule, left Iraq and became a Swedish citizen, returned during the US occupation, and was randomly arrested by the US and again tortured at Abu Ghraib, this time by the US.

Saleh refers to being electrically shocked by the US while a prisoner at Abu Ghraib at the 2:42 mark of this mp3:

NPR report of May 20, 2004 in which Saleh describes being tortured by Americans at Abu Ghraib

UPDATE posted June 17, 2004: More evidence of the US using electric shocks to torture prisoners. The New York Times ("Unit Says It Gave Earlier Warning of Abuse in Iraq," by Andrea Elliot, June 14, 2004) reports:

Two detainees reported having been given electric shocks at other holding facilities before arriving in Abu Ghraib, according to the interviews. One prisoner's file included photographs of burns on his body. "We didn't want people to know that we knew about it and didn't report it," the soldier said.

Just ask 19-year-old Abdullah Mohammed Abdulrazzaq, captured by U.S. troops at 2:30 one morning last September in the Baghdad apartment he shared with his widowed mother. Abdulrazzaq was hooded, handcuffed, tortured with electricity and shuttled back and forth among several prisons in Iraq, including Abu Graib. What were his interrogators most interested in learning from this 19-year-old? What he could tell them about the weapons of mass destruction. And as we know, Abdulazzaq’s case is far from unusual.

UPDATE posted June 23, 2004: More evidence still of the US using electric shocks to torture prisoners.

Time Magazine ("New Abuse Charges" by Viveca Novak and Douglas Waller, posted June 20, 2004) reports:

Meanwhile, a class action filed in California on behalf of former detainees raises the specter of brutal physical abuse. One plaintiff, identified only as Neisef, claims that after he was taken from his home on the outskirts of Baghdad last November and sent to Abu Ghraib, Americans made him disrobe and attached electrical wires to his genitals. He claims he was shocked three times. Although a vein in his penis ruptured and he had blood in his urine, he says, he was refused medical attention...On June 6, Neisef was released, after a U.S. civilian told him, he says, that he had been wrongly accused by informants. A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad confirms that a prisoner with Neisef's ID number was released on that date, and TIME has obtained a copy of his release order. But the Pentagon would not comment on the specifics of Neisef's account.