Freed prisoners recount horrors in Abu Ghraib

Rest was made impossible by loudspeakers blaring, the Beastie Boys’ rap anthem

‘‘The savagery the Americans have practiced against the Iraqis, well, now we have seen it, touched it and felt it,’’ Abbas said. ‘‘These types of actions will grow more hostile forces against the coalition, and this is the reason for the resistance.’’ The photographs of US soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners have reinforced the long-held view here that the US occupation is intent on humiliating the Iraqi people.

Former prisoners say lengthy interrogation sessions, employing sleep deprivation, severe isolation, fear and humiliation, and physical duress, were regular features of their daily regimen and remain so for the estimated 2,500 to 7,000 people inside the jails. The system comprises 16 prisons, four of which hold prisoners accused of being part of the anti-occupation insurgency. But there are countless other holding cells on US bases, many once used by former president Saddam Hussein’s government, where young Iraqis spend their first fearful hours in captivity. ‘‘We have to get to the bottom of it,’’ coalition spokesman Daniel Senor said on CNN’s Late Edition.

Abdullah Mohammed Abdulrazzaq, 19, was held for six months in several prisons around Iraq. ‘‘How can we not hate the Americans after the treatment we have received,’’ he said. After his arrest in September, Abdulrazzaq was taken to Aadamiya Palace, a compound once used by Uday Hussein. His interrogators — first US soldiers, then a man who he said wore the uniform of a Kuwaiti Army captain — sought information on the location of wmds, Hussein, and the insurgents. For the next three days, he said, the Kuwaiti man tortured him using electricity.

Then, Abdulrazzaq said he was taken to Abu Ghraib prison — to live in a tent with 40 other prisoners. A litre of water was expected to last each prisoner a week, he said, and a weekly army MRE augmented their one meal a day.

Abdulrazzaq was taken to a room with his hands and feet tied together, he said, then thrown on the floor. In that position, he would endure questioning, he said. Then one day he was informed at 5 am that he was being released. He never saw a lawyer nor any evidence against him. ‘‘I told him Allah released me, not you,’’ he said.

Saif Mahmoud Shakir, a 26-year-old taxi driver, always carries the papers he received on his March release from Abu Ghraib. He said he was taken from his house in July, accused of threatening to kill a translator working for the Americans.

The man owed him $60, he said, and was trying to avoid repaying the loan by lying about him to US troops eager to hunt down the insurgents. He said he served most of his time in Umm Qasr. His twin brother, Ali, was taken with him, and the two moved from prison to prison together for months. His first stop was another US base in Aadamiya.

Shakir said US interrogators used his relationship with his brother to try and extract a confession. On three occasions following extended sessions, he said, they were taken to the desert. There, he said, they were buried up to their necks in the sand. ‘‘I couldn’t see my brother,’’ he said.

‘‘Then I heard shots fired. They came back and told me my brother was dead.’’ But his brother had not been killed, and the interrogators sometimes fired near his head to frighten him. The only time he was shot, Shakir said, was by rubber bullets used by guards if prisoners were outside the tent after 9 pm, even to use the bathroom. He has two dark, dime-size scars on his right bicep. — (LAT-WP)