Former Prisoner Prefers Saddam's Torture to US Abuse
by Scheherezade Faramarzi
NAJAF, Iraq - Dhia al-Shweiri spent three stints in Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib prison, twice under Saddam Hussein's rule and once under American. He prefers torture at the hands of Hussein's henchmen to the humiliation of being stripped naked by his American guards, he said yesterday.
Now the 30-year-old, who used to work in a fabric shop, is a die-hard fighter in the Mahdi Army, the militia of a Shiite Muslim cleric who has vowed to take on the Americans.
Shweiri said that while jailed by Hussein's regime for being a member of a banned Islamic party, he was given electric shocks, beaten and hung from the ceiling with his hands tied behind his back.
"But that's better than the humiliation of being stripped naked," he said. "Shoot me here," he added, pointing between his eyes, "but don't do this to us."
For months, human-rights groups and former prisoners had complained of mistreatment at detention centers, but their protests were widely dismissed as politically motivated until the U.S. command started an investigation in January. Six American soldiers are now facing courts-martial, and their commander is being investigated.
The allegations exploded onto the world stage last week after CBS's 60 Minutes II broadcast images showing Iraqis stripped naked, hooded and being tormented by their U.S. captors.
An internal U.S. Army report found that Iraqi detainees were subjected to "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses," according to the New Yorker magazine.
On Saturday, Britain's Daily Mirror newspaper published a front-page picture of a British soldier apparently urinating on a hooded prisoner. The newspaper said it had been given the pictures by serving soldiers from the Queen's Lancashire Regiment.
Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said yesterday that there was no evidence of "systematic abuse" and that the actions of "just a handful" had unfairly tainted all American forces.
However, London-based Amnesty International said it had uncovered a "pattern of torture" of Iraqi prisoners by coalition troops, and called for an independent investigation.
Dan Senor, spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority, said the U.S. investigation would be full and aggressive. "Careers will be ended, and criminal charges are going to be leveled," Senor said on CNN.
Shweiri said he was not surprised to see TV images of smiling U.S. soldiers posing by naked, hooded inmates who, in one photograph, were piled in a human pyramid.
Shweiri, who was arrested by the Americans in October, said he was asked to take off his clothes only once and for about 15 minutes. "I thought they wanted me to change into the red prison uniform, so I took off my clothes, down to my underwear. Then he asked me to take off my underwear. I started arguing with him but in the end he made me take off my underwear," said Shweiri, who was too embarrassed to go into too much detail.
He said he and six other prisoners - all hooded - had to face the wall and bend over a little as they put their hands on the wall.
"They made us stand in a way that I am ashamed to describe. They came to look at us as we stood there. They knew this would humiliate us," he said, adding that he was not sodomized.
"They were trying to humiliate us, break our pride. We are men. It's OK if they beat me. Beatings don't hurt us, it's just a blow. But no one would want their manhood to be shattered," he said. "They wanted us to feel as though we were women, the way women feel and this is the worst insult, to feel like a woman."
Shweiri's account could not be independently verified.
He said he initially felt gratitude to the Americans for toppling Hussein, who had barred many Shiite public gatherings.
"I hated Saddam so much that when the Americans came, I viewed them as liberators. I was happy and supported them. But soon it became clear that they are no liberators but occupiers," he said. "I had seen how oppressed people were under Saddam, and I refused to give in to oppression and injustice. We must fight oppression."
When Shweiri left American detention, he said, his hatred for Hussein was replaced with one for America, and two months ago he joined the Mahdi Army of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
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