da "il manifesto" 01 July 2004
Interview with an Iraki woman tortured at Abu Graib.

In the middle of the night, American soldiers broke into the home of Mithal al Hassan and arrested both her and her soon. The soldiers later ransacked the apartment. Denounced as part of a vendetta, Mithal was condemned without trial to eighty days of horror in the company of other women prisoners who, like her, were subjected to abuse and torture. She has since spotted her tormentors on the internet.

Giuliana Sgrena, our correspondent in Baghdad

I had agreed to meet Mithal al Hassan in a hotel: 'I would prefer to talk on neutral ground,' she said, adding, 'at home, with my children around, I feel embarrassed.' But that appointment never came off. Having slipped into the Hotel Palestine, the sight of the cowed employees and the American soldiers had frightened her off. After all, she still hasn't had her ID papers returned. It took us hours to track her down again, but when we did she agreed to another meeting, this time at her apartment. She has a comfortable home - especially when the power cuts end - in a nice part of town, with tv, cd player, and computer. Her youngest daughter, just fourteen, came to the door, then vanished, only to reappear later with soft drinks, chocolates and grapes. Mithal was completely enveloped in her baya - not the shapeless black cloak worn by Shiite women in the poorer districts - but a wholly embroidered black dress, complete with veil. The dark kajal eyeshadow she was wearing emphasised the grey-green colour of her large eyes. Mithal got divorced eight years ago now. Her husband remarried and moved to Lybia. She has had to bring up their seven children single-handed, working first in a bakery and then as a taxi-driver. 'All Saddam taught us was how to work hard', she says. Her strength and her pride both emerge clearly when we come to speak of Abu Graib and the painful events that have been tormenting her these last few months. It's a long story and the details are harrowing. For Mithal, it was eighty days of hell.

At dead of night they broke down the door

'It was 2.30 a.m. on the night of 28 February 2004, when the American soldiers broke down our door. When Saddam was in power, every now and then the local mukhtar [formally a 'people's representative'] would turn up with his men to check on what we were doing, but at least they would ring the bell. Once the Americans were in the apartment, they began to ransack the place, and then they arrested me. They also took all our papers and keys, and the seven million dinars [about four thousand US dollars], that I had scraped together by selling our two cars. I had been going to use the money to pay off my debts.' At this point Mithal showed us the report of the police raid that appeared in the newspaper Zaman. 'They asked me,' Mithal resumed, 'if I knew Hassib. It so happens that our neighbour's name is Hassib, though everyone calls him Abu Aya. Anyway, the Americans were searching for a certain Hassib, an arms dealer. I eventually discovered that the man they were looking for was a Syrian official, nothing to do with my neighbour.'

It turned out that what had triggered the raid was a vendetta. It's quite a complex story. The 'information' that had led the Americans to Mithal al Hassan's door had been supplied by the occupants of premises that had once been home to the Ministry of Information. The said occupants had stolen some generators and the people living nearby, including Mithal, had denounced them for the theft. As a result, Mithal and her thirty-eight year old son were arrested. 'They dragged me down five flights of stairs, still in my nightdress. I only just managed to grab hold of my baya on my way out the door,' Mithal related. 'They took me to Sujud Palace, which had been named after Saddam's wife, Sajida. On the way there they pointed out to me a man in a jellaba with a bag over his head, tied to a tree. It was my son. I recognised him by his trousers. They dragged him over to where I was and took the bag off his head. He had been horribly tortured, with deep cuts to his head. Then they said to him, 'Say goodbye to your mother.' After that, they put the bag back on his head and tied to him to a post again. Then a soldier dragged me off again. He was in a real hurry. My head was covered and my hands were bound behind my back. My baya wasn't properly buttoned up so it trailed around my feet and kept tripping me up. I couldn't run properly, it was cold and I was shivering. Then the soldier threw me to the ground. My feet were bare and I tried to warm them up by pushing them into the sand. Eventually they took me to a room and wrapped me up in a blanket. I felt I was suffocating and kept hammering my feet on the ground to make some noise. Then they turned up with the photos of my children. When I saw them, I began to weep, but they just yelled at me, "where's all that strength that Saddam gave you?" Then, throwing the photos on the ground, they shouted, "Say goodbye to your children. You'll not be seeing them for thirty years." I didn't believe it. I've read about psychology and I know that such methods are used to scare people. Later they brought my son back and left us alone together. My son asked me if it was true that I was one of Saddam's agents. How was it possible for my son to ask me such a question after all the sacrifices I had made to bring them up? I'm just a poor woman from Najaf, a Shiite, and Saddam certainly never loved us Shiites. How could I have been an agent of his? The soldiers had even told my son to confess that he knew Hassib and that if he did they would release him. Then they took him away again. That was the last I heard of him until I was able to return home. He had been set free the following day.'

The kind woman-soldier

Mithal rubs her hands together, recalling how they had turned black from being bound too tightly, so tightly that she had been unable to move them. But then a kind woman-soldier had untied them so Mithal could go to the toilet. 'She was the first kind person I met. She even helped me tie my hair up. And afterwards when she bound my hands again, she left them fairly loose. So I gave her my earrings. Then they loaded me into a van, spread me out on the floor so nobody would see me, and drove me to the airport. There I was led into a big room where there was a doctor who wanted me to undress. I refused, saying that I was a Muslim and therefore couldn't do what he asked. Then he threatened to cut the clothes off me. I asked him if I could at least keep my underwear on and he agreed to that. In the end, however, he only checked my wrists. Then they moved me to another room, a huge place, for questioning. The interrogator was a woman in civilian clothes, but there were two men sitting in a corner. They had taken all my ID papers from my apartment but the first thing they questioned me about was the number of papers I had: apart from my ID card, my food ration card and the residence certificate that had been compiled by the police and signed by a lieutenant. My interrogator insisted that I was that lieutenant. I replied that if I had worked for the police by my age I would be a colonel, at the very least. Then there was the word mutallaka ['divorced'] on my ID card. According to the interpreter, who was of Iraki origin but had been living abroad for the last forty-five years, the word was really mutlak, which means 'absolute'. This, they maintained, signified some kind of recognition by Saddam. They were all shouting at once. Eventually they took me to a cell: one metre by a metre and a half and nothing but a bottle of water. They left me there for six nights. One day they made me lean up against the wall with my hands in the air, but I wasn't strong enough to remain in that position. Then the black woman-soldier arrived and kept yelling in my face, but since I wasn't getting scared she eventually apologised and said, 'you're brave.'

This was just the beginning of Mithal's ordeal. 'Sometimes they'd turn the heating right up and to get to sleep I'd have to splash myself with the little water they gave me. There were times when they didn't give me any water or food at all. Then, from the neighbouring cells I could hear the screams of the men who were being tortured, sounds of weeping and screaming that were recorded and played back all night long full-blast, along with other sounds like approaching footsteps on gravel, but the ground there was nothing but sand. There was no way you could sleep. I hated their food. I couldn't stand things any more. In the end I asked if I could write a note for my children, because I wanted to commit suicide.'

The psychological torture continued. Then, at a certain point, they told Mithal that she was on a list of prisoners earmarked for release. They told her to get her things together. But it wasn't freedom that awaited her.

'They led me to a huge, freezing room, My teeth were chattering from the cold. There on display was an entire set of torture instruments. They blindfolded me with sticky tape and then, along with thirteen men, they put me on a helicopter. The flight didn't take long, less than an hour.' Mithal and the others were taken to Abu Graib. 'On arrival, they first of all examined our bodies, hair, and teeth, recording everything on a computer. I felt ill. I was suffering from an allergy and couldn't eat anything any longer so Um Iraq, one of the interpreters, an Iraki woman from abroad, gave me some bananas to eat. I needed medicines but they said they didn't have any.'

I asked her if she was held on her own all the time. 'No. It was then that they put me in a cell with other women, two women per cell. There were thirteen women, mainly wives of men belonging to the previous regime, and seven children. There was even the wife of Sabah Merza, one of Saddam's guards in the 1970s, who kept her hands plunged in ice to soothe the pain caused by the torture that had been inflicted on her. Another woman was in really bad shape: they'd kept hurling her against the wall. Another had been locked in a tiny cage for six days and couldn't even move. One of the prisoners had been forced to walk on all fours and her knees and elbows were in a terrible state. Another woman had been forced to separate faeces from urine, using her own hands. The soldiers frequently forced us to drink water from the toilet bowl. A woman of sixty, who had said she was a virgin, was continually threatened with rape.'

Did you know of cases of rape? 'Yes, but I'm not going to go into that. In our society, it's something you don't talk about.' How old were the women prisoners? 'Between forty and sixty years of age.' And what about children, how were they treated? 'We heard them screaming. They were tortured too. Mostly dogs were set on them.' So how did your release come about? 'In the end, in part I think because of the pressure maintained by the resistance, they decided to release me. They even gave me back my earrings. They wanted to drive me to my apartment but I refused. After everything I had been through, I didn't want to be mistaken for a collaborator. And because I refused to leave on the 21 May, I was held until the 23dx, two more days under a filthy tent, where I collapsed.' Have you seen the pictures of the torture at Abu Graib? Did you recognise anyone? 'Yes, I saw them on the internet. I recognised several detainees, for example Abdul Mudud, the brother-in-law of Al Duri, who had had his jaws broken and an eye put out. I also recognised some of the soldiers. Sometimes they made a hundred or more prisoners lie on the ground and then trampled them underfoot.' What do you think of the resistance? 'The United States have occupied our country, we have the right to defend ourselves. Resistance is self-defence. But killing Irakis is not resistance.' Aren't you afraid of speaking about what you saw? 'I've done nothing wrong. Why should I be afraid?'

http://www.ilmanifesto.it/pag/sgrena/en/420dc5a37ba4d.html

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