Prison abuse victims fall into focus after Abu Ghraib

There are likely to be more scenes like the one on Sunday at a news conference organised by the Organization for Human Rights in Iraq for former inmates and the families of prisoners in US-run jails 8212; their anger given new credibility after the release of pictures showing mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib by their US guards.

For months, human rights groups and Iraqi leaders say they have complained to US officials about the improper treatment of prisoners and they say their appeals received little attention.

But now the scandal has given these complaints a new platform. And Secretary of Defense Donald L. Rumsfeld8217;s promise in a Senate hearing last week to pay compensation has provided a new incentive for people to come forward 8212; though it may be increasingly hard to separate real victims from opportunists.

The Organization for Human Rights in Iraq says it has received only two formal complaints against US soldiers, both by former prisoners, though it now expects that number to rise quickly.

Although many of the complaints concerned rough-handed arrests and the inability to see loved ones in jail, several said they were the victims of more serious abuse. At least two said relatives died while in US custody.

Three sons of former Maj Gen Abed Hamed Mowhoush showed pictures of their father8217;s body 8212; taken, they said, after the corpse was dumped at a hospital in Qiam, near the Syrian border, and underwent an autopsy. The death certificate after an autopsy says he died of a heart attack during interrogation. The pictures showed bruises on his face and legs.

The case of Mowhoush, who died on November 26, 2003, after complaining during an interrogation that he felt unwell and collapsed, is one of 25 prisoner deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002 that US military officials say they are probing.

Military officials said they believed Mowhoush was helping finance anti-US insurgents. His sons deny this, saying that all four of his sons and another relative were innocents swept up in arrests in Qiam in October, and that their father turned himself in later. The sons said that they were beaten and shocked with a cattle prod by interrogators wanting to know where their father was and whether they were involved in the insurgency.

Hussam Mowhoush said: 8216;8216;After we were released and my father died, they said, 8216;We haven8217;t found anything against you. We are sorry8217;.8217;8217;

Another man at the news conference, Abbas Farhan, 54, carried documents that included the death certificate of his son, Mousa, 26. The certificate said he died in Abu Ghraib on April 14 of a gunshot wound. But that is all he said knows of his son8217;s death.

He said his son, a security guard, was arrested two weeks earlier charged not with attacking Americans but with helping transport the body of someone his employer had killed. He said he does not know if US guards caused his son8217;s death, but he said he was not surprised at the brutality shown by the pictures from Abu Ghraib last week.

One of the two men who filed complaints with the organisation did not attend the conference. The reason, said Abdul Rahman Muhammad Saleh, 38, is that he felt most of the people there were only seeking compensation. For the abuse he said he suffered during four months of imprisonment last year, he only wants one thing: For the Americans to leave Iraq. 8216;8216;This is our compensation,8217;8217; he said on Sunday.

Arrested on June 18, 2003, from his home in the Shaab neighbourhood of Baghdad, Saleh was accused of belonging to an armed group. He said he was handcuffed and beaten and 8216;8216;one of them kicked dust in my mouth. I started vomiting and then I passed out8217;8217;.

Two days later, he said he was moved to the Baghdad airport, to an encampment that held 400 prisoners. The interrogation began a week later, he said, carried out in a trailer divided into cells about a yard square. He said he sat alone, unable to stretch out fully, for eight days before the questions began.

After three months he was released. 8216;8216;I realised they came to obliterate a whole society, a whole civilisation. 8216;8216;And it8217;s true. They managed to destroy that society.8217;8217;