Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Abu Ghraib prisoner seeks justice one year after scandal

The Iraq Solidarity Campaign | 27.04.2005 12:16 | Social Struggles

BAGHDAD — Ali Al Shalal, nicknamed “clawman” by his US guards, said they attached electrodes to his body and tortured him at the height of the abuse scandal at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.



And he describes going through the same agony as a man in an infamous photo of a black-hooded prisoner, dressed like the grim reaper, humiliated and standing on a crate, with wires running from his body that captured the spirit of sadism in the US-run detention centre. A year after the revelations of rampant sexual and physical abuse leaked to the media, the 42-year-old Shalal has rebuilt his life, fighting for those abused in Iraq's US-run prisons.

But he is haunted by his own memories from the autumn of 2003 in the notorious prison on Baghdad's western outskirts. “I consider speaking out part of a peaceful jihad (holy war),” says Shalal, a big man, with a touch of grey to his hair. After CBS News aired photos of US prison guards forcing detainees into degrading sexual positions on April 28, 2004, a torrent of pictures, snapped by the guards, were shown around the world.

They included naked men in a pyramid, forced to simulate oral sex, another detainee pulled on a leash, another snarled at by ferocious guard dogs. Shalal responded to his ordeal by forming a prisoners' rights group and joining a class action law suit in the United States against translation firms CACI International and Titan Corp, whose representatives were allegedly involved in the notorious actions at the prison facility, once dreaded as the main execution ground of Saddam Hussein's regime. Five of seven Abu Ghraib prison guards have so far received punishments ranging from six months to 10 years' imprisonment.

The senior commander of the US military in Iraq at the time of the scandal, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, was cleared Friday of any wrongdoing by a US military probe. “Since I was freed in January 2004, not one day have I been happy. I am haunted by the nightmare that I lived. But it's even harder to see the trials of the torturers without the victims being able to claim justice,” Shalal says. So far, he has taken 10 prisoners to Amman where they have met US lawyers who are pressing a class-action suit in a US federal court against Titan and CACI, with the US military named as a co-conspirator.

One Philadelphia-based attorney, Susan Burke, said the class-action suit, so far counts 120 former detainees, and spans incidents in some 30 prisons across Iraq. “The reality is how could this have happened. The world needs to know,” Burke told AFP. Reflecting on the scandal, Shalal says: “I was very happy when the photos were published because they convinced the sceptics of the reality of the US occupation. Before many people did not believe us, especially Iraqi officials who accuse us of lying.” Shalal was arrested on October 13, 2003 by a car park close to a mosque in Amariyah in western Baghdad and accused of being an insurgent.

The next day, he was taken to Abu Ghraib and kept in a tent with other prisoners. His hands and feet chained, a sack on his head, they moved him to the indoor cells where he found himself in “hell.” “They accused me of attacking coalition forces. I told them they should look at my hand, then they would understand that I couldn't attack anyone,” he said. His hand was deformed in 2003 when a rifle he was holding accidentally discharged.

They accused him of taking advantage of his position of a local leader in the Amariyah district to incite people to fight the Americans. “They put a pistol to my head and my penis, and shouted `Edam' (execution). They had an Egyptian translator-interrogator — Adel Nahla Abu Hamdad — who walked on my back and said `Give us names otherwise we will make your hand rot from gangrene'.”

They chained his hands to the bars of his cell, with a loudspeaker above his head blaring out the song “By the Rivers of Babylon” by 70s Euro-disco group Boney M. “They took photos of me while I was naked and I had to pee by my feet. I recited the Koran and I wished they would kill me ... Arabs are very modest so death was preferable to this humiliation,” he said, choking back tears.

The soldiers gave detainees nicknames like “Colin Powell,” “Big Bird,” “Dracula,” “Gilligan”. He
was named “Clawman” because of his burnt and deformed hand. Shalal was in Cell 49. Opposite him was a man the guards named “Wolfman,” who was ordered to bark all the time and forced to wear a woman's red nightie. Once, they took Shalal out of his cell at night, threw a sack over him and tied a wire to a finger on each hand and made him stand on a box.

“They electrocuted me. I had the impression my eyes were falling out of their sockets and I fell down. At that moment, they took my picture and laughed. They did it again. I fell without even knowing.” After a third time, he could not stand up. “My teeth were chattering and I tasted blood in my mouth from where I bit my tongue.” He is still bothered by the memory of a father and son on his cell block.

“They put sacks on their heads. They asked the son if he wanted to go the bathroom and he answered yes. They told the father to stretch out on the ground and everyone to shut up. “The son peed and when they took the sack off his head, he saw he had urinated on his father. And all this time, the guards took pictures and could not stop laughing.”

By Sammy Ketz Agence France-Presse

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

The Iraq Solidarity Campaign
- e-mail: MCR_Coalition@yahoo.co.uk
- Homepage: http://www.iraqsolidaritycampaign.blogspot.com

Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech