Reporter’s Pocket book: Taking the hood off 20 years later | The Iraq Conflict: 20 years on Information

Berlin, Germany – It was snowing and the roads had been empty on an early Saturday. The dread was, is it actually him? Will he agree to talk?

We arrived at his condominium and had been greeted by a good friend who took us up. He introduces himself in sensible apparel. Meet Ali Shallal al-Qaysi, the person beneath the hood of the torture pictures from the notorious Abu Ghraib jail.

He takes me to the kitchen and whispers as we arrange for the TV interview within the different room – some particulars are too ugly and painful to recount. I guarantee him, it’s his story and I’ll take heed to what he has to inform us. What ensues within the subsequent couple of hours just isn’t for the faint-hearted. His tales paint a horrific image of inhumane abuse, humiliation, torture and sadistic behaviour.

“I used to be standing on the field. It’s so robust, not breakable. They tied wires and began electrical shocks. I bear in mind biting my tongue, my eyes felt they had been about to come out. I began bleeding from beneath the masks and I fell down,” says Ali.

Regardless of his hand dropping full perform due to the torture, Ali likes to color in his spare time. His condominium is filled with canvases. One stands out – a hood, orange jumpsuit, and handcuffs with 151716 painted on it, Ali’s prisoner quantity. He says they wrote “Massive Fish” with a marker on his brow, a standard follow of “marking” high-profile prisoners.

‘A prime secret place’

With out jail information, we can not confirm he’s the person beneath the hood. However with testimony from 20 years in the past, his deformed hand that earned him the nickname “the claw”, his pictures, courtroom circumstances, and interviews with former jail officers and legal professionals, it’s clear Ali was among the many victims at Abu Ghraib.

Ali was saved for months, between 2003 and 2004, on the jail. At one level after his torture, he says, he misplaced observe of time for weeks as he was left within the tents the place prisoners had been held.

Abu Ghraib was feared from the time of Saddam Hussein, who constructed torture chambers there. After the 2003 US-led invasion, US contractors constructed extra cells geared up with deadbolts.

Now-demoted, Common Janis Karpinski was commander of Abu Ghraib jail when the abuse scandal erupted. She informed Al Jazeera she was unaware of the torture between Could and September 2003 when she was in command of the jail.

“There was a central wing which served because the cafeteria. On the left had been cell blocks 1A and B, 2A and B … and on the correct, the final constructing which was not broken within the [air] strikes. This turned a top-secret place. The final cell block was the place Pappas [Colonel Thomas Pappas, who was in charge of Abu Ghraib prison’s intelligence unit] had his satellites and his males had been stationed. They’d a direct line to [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld there. They did interrogations there. Females had been saved over on the airport facility. There could have been a couple of in Abu Ghraib,” says Karpinski.

Femalen ‘hostages’

Ali wells up when he describes the screams of ladies saved on the opposite aspect of his cell block. “Ladies had been placed on the sector to our left on the second ground. We heard their cries. The guards used to get a male detainee to serve them meals however on one situation, he ought to serve them meals whereas he’s absolutely bare. We had been all saved bare by the best way. We used to listen to their screams, there was a man referred to as Fredrik who used to hurt them.”

Ali broke down at this level, sobbing. “We couldn’t assist them, we couldn’t do something for them. A few of us had been banging heads in opposition to the wall, we don’t want this to occur time and again. Occupation is the worst form of terrorism, crushes the dignity of individuals and destroys nations. It was not simple to listen to these ladies cry. They did nothing, they had been introduced as hostages. When [the Americans] perform a raid in opposition to a former regime official or a nuclear scientist and fail to detain the wished man, they introduced ladies as hostages.

“We heard them crying and screaming what they’ve been going by. I’ve witnessed a horrible scene – a person had his spouse raped earlier than his eyes.”

Human rights teams have documented beatings, extended sleep and sensory depravation, and detainees being held bare and tortured.

‘They had been sadists’

The photographs – taken and launched by an American soldier – shocked the world with their sheer brutality. Probably the most express pictures depict nudity, degradation, simulated intercourse acts, and American guards posing with decaying corpses. After a world outcry, 11 US troopers had been convicted, however others had been reprimanded with none prices.

“Abu Ghraib, Camp Bucca and different torture websites lowered the bar for adherence to the Geneva Conventions and different worldwide obligations to deal with prisoners humanely,” says Letta Tayler from Human Rights Watch.

“Sarcastically, one of many many flimsy justifications made by President George W Bush to invade Iraq was that Iraqi chief Saddam Hussein would assist terrorists. But it was the US-led invasion that created a safety vacuum and fueled grievances that enabled the rise of al-Qaeda in Iraq, which morphed into ISIS [ISIL], prompting but extra cycles of violence.

“All US presidents since George W Bush, who began the Iraq conflict, have refused to prosecute any of the architects of the conflict crimes dedicated through the Iraq conflict. For instance, no rating official has been prosecuted for the horrors inflicted on detainees at Abu Ghraib, solely lower-level army personnel who generally acquired negligible sentences. Most civilians by no means acquired any funding or different amends for deaths, accidents, or property harm by US forces, a lot much less apologies.”

Ali says the photographs solely replicate a fraction of the abuse that befell after the invasion.

“Abu Ghraib jail was one out of 75 different websites used as detention centres with these violations. What sort of human being can do such issues? To drive folks to be bare, sexually humiliated, inserting damaged wooden sticks in delicate elements till they bleed, electrical shock to genitals. I bear in mind one man … he died earlier than our eyes whereas he was tortured. They had been sadists.”

After we requested in regards to the notorious canine pictures, Ali replies, “I used to be humiliated, I used to be mauled by a canine proper right here”, pointing to a chunk scar on his neck. “I used to be bare within the cell. there was no mattress. They meant to hurt us by bringing the canine into the cell.”

Ali says he has devoted his life to looking for justice from the architects of the abuse. His lawyer Andreas Schüller works for the European Middle for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR).

“It’s a really clear-cut case of torture in jail beneath the army occupation by the US, however however you too can present the chain of command in establishing the jail system, the mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq by the US army. And this goes all as much as Donald Rumsfeld,” Schüller says.

Ali’s legal professionals say German authorities ought to have completed rather more for the reason that case was filed in 2015. ECCHR requested the prosecutor to safe proof and take testimonies of survivors and consultants. Schüller says German federal prosecutors haven’t pursued Ali’s case as they did earlier ones.

“There are political causes not to try this, to go in opposition to an ally in opposition to america. Even 20 years after the invasion of Iraq, it’s a continuing matter. You noticed it in 2003 with the US-UK-led invasion of Iraq and now see it with Russia in Ukraine. And so long as it’s not punished, the danger is that we see it once more in numerous constellations,” says Schüller.

Again in Ali’s condominium, I requested, “Why did they name you the claw at Abu Ghraib?”

“This occurred after they hanged me on the wall. Due to the burden of my physique, the handcuff was piercing my hand. The wound was virtually rotten,” he says.

So had been the hangings and electrocutions the worst of the torture?

“One other means of torture was music. It’s worse than bodily torture. They drive you [to] lie in your abdomen on the bottom, all tied up. And so they carry large audio system thumping with an unbearably loud noise positioned on both aspect of your head. I bear in mind the track they performed referred to as Babylon, Babylon, even after they turned off the audio system, it saved ringing in my ears.”

Ali’s ordeal ended when he was taken in a truck and launched on a freeway away from Abu Ghraib with dozens of different prisoners. He was by no means charged with a criminal offense.

As he waits for justice, Ali refuses to let the world neglect his story. He says his worst nightmare is that if folks don’t bear in mind and it occurs once more to others in one other conflict.

Though his lawyer just isn’t hopeful that Ali will see justice in his lifetime, he’s adamant to hold on.

“I believe even after 1,000 years, our nice grandsons will obtain our rights. The world is altering and individuals who had been tortured in Vietnam and different locations, they’re getting their rights … Even for individuals who had been tortured by the Nazis or by Stalin, Hitler and others, now they’re getting their rights,” says Ali.