The dark and secret dungeons of Iraq. Horror stories of female prisoners

[yota691]

The dark and secret dungeons of Iraq. Horror stories of female prisoners

by Wijhat Nadhar on 2/12/2012

When women in Iraq are arrested, they routinely go through three gruesome phases, starting with humiliation, followed by torture, and often ending with rape. I have received disturbing information from two different, well informed sources: one from qualified social workers in Al-Kadimiyah Women Prison, the other from three national guards officers who worked in the prison.

The common procedure is as follows:

During the Arrest

The torture journey starts when security forces raid and search the houses, through random raids or ordered raids. The Fourth Commander of the Second Brigade – Team 6, Major Jumaa Al-Musawi, has confirmed this information. This man has a criminal record, and he was assigned to this position by the American Forces during their first training courses in intelligence gathering. He used to live in Al-Thawra (now called Sadr City) / Sector 87. In his own words:

“When we receive the raid and search orders from the Brigade Intelligence, we usually start with a little party and drink alcohol, or take some drugs. We choose the most cruel soldiers to carry out such operations. The first thing we do is to lock the men and youngsters in a room, and the women and children in another room. We start to steal what can be taken fast, like jewelry, and we mess up the house, like throwing the women’s underwear here and there; some soldiers even steal some of this underwear. After that, we start to do a body search on the women, and having fun touching their private parts or breasts. We threaten them to arrest the men in the house when they refuse to be touched. If those women are pretty, we usually rape them immediately, and leave the house when we find no weapons or incriminating material. In case we find some weapons, every man and youngster in the house will be arrested, and if there are no men at home, we arrest all the women instead. This is totally according to the orders we receive.”

What follows is one of many stories about the crimes committed by these corrupt creatures, who shamelessly brag about their misdeeds to each other. Al-Musawi and his assistant Lt. Rafid Al-Darraji (another criminal who was imprisoned in Abu-Ghraib and sentenced to death, but was released by the Americans, using him as a guardian, along with their own guard dogs, giving him the Lt. rank. He used to live in Al-Nuariyah District. Here is what they state:

“In July 2006, we received an order to raid and search the house of one of the fabric merchants in Karradah (his name is not mentioned). When we reached his house at 1:00 a.m., we didn’t find the man, we only found his wife and his 17 year old son. During the search we found a rifle, which - according to our law - is permitted for the personal protection of civilians. But we threatened the woman that we would arrest her son if she didn’t let us rape her. So, we handcuffed the son and locked him in a room, and one soldier after the other raped the lady in the other room. The other soldiers stole what they could find, then we headed to a well-known brothel in Al-Doura District in Um Alaa’s house to enjoy the rest of the night there.”

They continue: “The first thing we do when an arrested woman is being transported to the detention location, is that every part of her body is touched by all the soldiers in the vehicle, while using dirty language. When we reach the detention facility, we leave her in the investigation room, supervised by the intelligence officer and his assistants. They directly take all her clothes off, blindfold her, handcuff her, then the intelligence officer starts to rape her with his assistant. And later they ask her some questions: if she’s guilty or innocent and so on. Then they blackmail her, saying that she should be cooperative and give important information about the District where she lives, otherwise they would distribute photos of her while she was naked and being raped. They would accuse her of false charges if she would file a complaint about harrassment and torture. If she receives a "guilty" verdict, she usually stays in the same location for a period of one to three months, in order to finish the procedures of her “case”, to be sent to the headquarters. During these months, every single intelligence officer and soldier in the Brigade will rape her. After that, she will be sent to Al Tasfeerat Prison in Shaab Stadium, or to Al-Muthanna Airport Prison. Sometimes the prisoner is transferred to the facility of the Chief Commander's Office in the Green Zone, which is a cellar under the building of the Baghdad Operations Headquarter, supervised by Major General Adnan Al-Musawi. This place is one of the most dangerous, dirtiest prisons of Al-Maliki.

Al-Tasfeerat Prisons

This is the second stage of the unfair arrest journey. The female detainee will be sent either to Shaab Stadium Prison or the notorious Al-Muthanna Airport Prison. A group of the worst psychopaths in the government is supervising these prisons, a corrupt committee of criminals of the Military Intelligence, the Intelligence services of the Ministry of Interior, and an Intelligence and Security Representative from the Chief Commander’s Office. This management is appointed by the Iraqi Correction Office through the Ministry of Justice. 45% of its employees are Al-Mahdi Militia members, 30% from the Badr Organisation. The other 25% is divided among the other criminal parties of the government.

This phase is considered as the most barbaric. The security forces, prison guards and members of the prison management practice the most terrible ways of torture, humiliation, profanation, deprivation, blackmailing the prisoners, ethnic and sectarian and political discrimination, and raping men and women without exception. Female prisoners are detained for very long periods, without legitimate accusations or investigating their case. In criminal Maliki’s jails, there are many women who were imprisoned for periods between one year and six years, without any legal representation or procedures regarding their case.

There are many examples of the immoral and brutal practices being committed against female and male prisoners in Al-Tasfeerat Prisons. Some officers from the Ministries of Interior and Defense, the Office of the Chief of Command, and some partisan and criminal militia leaders visit these prisons, and choose some detainees to be tortured for hours and raping them for sectarian reasons. Some of the prisoners die as a result of this brutal torture. Between 2008-2012 Al-Rasafah Tasfeerat Prison recorded the death of more than 250 prisoners, among them 17 women. During the same period Al-Muthanna Airport Prison recorded the death of 125 prisoners, among them three women.

And these torture practices do not only take place in Al-Tasfeerat Prisons, but in all the prisons supervised by the Ministry of Justice, especially the Juveniles Prison, Al-Kadimiyah Women Prison, the notorious Abu-Ghraib Prison, in addition to the secret prisons of Al-Maliki where no accurate records are available about the male and female detainees who died because of the brutal torture they faced there.

It’s worth mentioning that under Al Maliki’s rule, some notorious high risk level prisoners - men and women alike- were released or secretly smuggled out Al-Tasfeerat Prisons, after destroying all the documents and papers related to their cases, on the orders of Ministers and VIPs in the Ministries of Interior and Defense, and the Commanding Chief’s Office. Here are some of prisoners who were “released”:

Radiyah Kadum Muhsin : she was one of the prominent leaders of the Dawa Party, and was released after an order from Al-Maliki himself, and under the supervision of his Intelligence and Security Consultant. She was accused of leading one of the biggest human trafficking criminal gangs that kidnap children and sell them, in addition to prostitution, seducing some officers and government officials, and blackmailing them with their own pornographic photos, or even eliminating them. She was also accused of drug dealing, and forging official documents.

Adnan Abdulzahra Al-Aaraji: he is one of the prominent leaders of the Mahdi Militia, and the head of one of the most notorious gangs known in Iraqi history in terms of sadism, criminality and discrimination. He was arrested by the Americans while he was trying to smuggle 5000 corpses of his victims to Iran during the sectarian wars in 2006. Those corpses were sent to Iran in three cooled vehicles for the sake of human organs trade. He was accused of smuggling antiques, explosives, weapons, and drugs. We mentioned here only two of the prisoners who were “released” from Al-Maliki prisons.

After The Trial

Here begins the real tragedy. After the arrest, the prisoner - if she’s still alive - has physical wounds all over her body, having many psychological problems because of the unfair trials and the terrible treatment she faced during the time in prison, including torture and rape.

And here is another serious hardship the female prisoners are facing inside the detention centres.

There are women in these prisons with criminal records, convicted for various crimes. The prison supervisors use those inmates to bully the arbitrarily detained, innocent female detainees, imprisoned for sectarian reasons, because of false accusations or reports by secret informants. Those inmates are scaring the arbitrarily detained, watching them, blackmailing them through continuous attempts to find out things about their personal lives. Then that information is used against these innocent women to break them psychologically, through disinformation and lies about the families of those innocent prisoners.

Various Ways of Torture of Iraqi Female Prisoners

1- Physical and Psychological Torture: the prison supervisors use many different forms of physical and psychological torture, which they learned from their Americans and the Iranians supervisors. These methods include:

Taking off the clothes of the prisoners for more than two hours, while insulting them.

Beating them hard with sticks, or kicking them hard in the loins.

Electrical shocks in their breasts, loins and head.

Using all kinds of sexual harassment (we will not reveal more details because of the extreme shameful nature).

Recurrent rape after midnight by the guards and other persons who work in the prison, in the presence of the prison manager, because the rape often happens in his room.

Those criminals: the prison manager and the other supervisors, continuously repeat their disgusting acts. They invite other security officers from the Ministries of Interior and Defense to participate in their savage orgies, that always end in rape of the prisoners.

I will mention only one incident I witnessed in Al-Kadimiyah Prison in 2008 and can be confirmed by a social assistant who works there:

In one of the secret prisons of Al-Maliki in the Green Zone, there was a prisoner named A.A.Al-Zaidi. He was a Police Colonel before, and also held a position in the Intelligence Dept of the Badr Org., known as one of the terrorist extremist militias. His task was to assist the Commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in getting information, names and addresses of security and intelligence officers from Saddam’s regime, so that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards could find them and eliminate them. His wife was helping him too, along with her cousin who is a lieutenant in the Ministry of Interior Special Commandos, called Sayid Jalal Al-Magsoosi.

A.A.Al-Zaidi was also responsible for recruiting women to carry out suicide attacks in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Sunni areas in Iraq, especially Diyala and Baghdad. He was arrested by the American Forces while he was trying to illegally enter Jordan with his wife and other three women, carrying spying equipments. His wife and the three women were put in Al-Kadimiyah Prison, but he was taken to Al-Maliki’s secret prison in the Green Zone.

On New Year's Eve, while the intelligence officers and some interrogators were partying and drinking in the prison, they told one of the guards to bring A.A.Al-Zaidi. The prisoner entered and the drunken officers asked whether he wanted to talk to his wife on the phone. They phoned the manager of Al-Kadimiyah Prison, asking him to bring the prisoner’s wife. The two talked on the phone, and the prisoner was taken to his cell again.

After that, the chief interrogator talked to the wife and said: “we want to party with you and five other pretty friends of yours. We will be coming within an hour to the women prison, so you should all be ready. You will be five and we are six. The prison manager prepared a room for them, and all the prisoners were raped many times by the officers and two of the prison guards. While they were partying and raping the women, they cheered: “hail to Al-Maliki, the pimp, the liar, the thief of Baghdad!”

2- Deprivation:

This word does not accurately describe the dire situation of the women in prisons who are devoid from the simplest rights and needs, like;

Deprivation of family visits, phone calls, and all kinds of contact.

Deprivation of health services, health care, and other sanitary needs.

Deprivation of legal rights, no authorization to see or consult a lawyer.

Deprivation of regular exposure to sunlight, and having no detergents or necessary disinfectants.

Deprivation of complaining to the concerned committees, prisoners are threatened that they should not complain to those committees or else... And even if the prisoners file a complaint, no one will ever listen, because those committees will hear the complaints and then neglect them.

3- Blackmail and Terrorization:

Female prisoners often receive threats that their family members will be arrested and false accusations are made against the families of the prisoners. The prisoner has to pay a huge amount of money and has to beg to make a phone call to her family. Those who have not enough money can sell their bodies to make a phone call.

This is just a brief account of what is happening in the women prisons. Baghdad alone has more than 3000 women imprisoned. The prisoners are distributed among the following jails:

Al-Kadimiyah Prison

Al-Tasfeerat Prison in Shaab Stadium.

Al-Muthanna Airport Prison.

Al-Baladiyyat Prison.

Al-Rustumiyah Prison.

There’s another secret prison supervised by the Chief Commander’s Office, containing 65 imprisoned women. The site of this prison is changed regularly. in addition to these prisons other small detention centres are located in different security and intelligence operations headquarters.

Translation from Arabic: Lubna Al Rudaini http://expeditiony.be/bt/article_view.asp?id=629#.UL35EoPAcVT

[jlldrs]

That was definitely a difficult read.

[uncirculd]

Tell me again BL, Frank, FF and you other Guru's how wonderful maliki is and how he is holding his country together! Tell me again. Holding it together for what? For his penis and his boys penis? To be able to make him and his men big men by degrading, humiliating, and destroying women? I just want to know how these gurus condone maliki and his actions and root for his majority government so he can continue with this type behavior and recruit the youth into this type behavior. This is beyond low life. Beyond evil. It was a very hard read. I guess this kind of stuff don't bother ya'll since it is not you. Not now anyway. But by accepting it, you put yourself subject to it. You gurus are so wrong. So wrong. I can't believe you think this man is NOT the problem.

[sxsess]

Disgusting to say the least. This is part of the evil thats taking over the world. These people need to be exterminated.

[Francie26]

Tell me again BL, Frank, FF and you other Guru's how wonderful maliki is and how he is holding his country together! Tell me again. Holding it together for what? For his penis and his boys penis? To be able to make him and his men big men by degrading, humiliating, and destroying women? I just want to know how these gurus condone maliki and his actions and root for his majority government so he can continue with this type behavior and recruit the youth into this type behavior. This is beyond low life. Beyond evil. It was a very hard read. I guess this kind of stuff don't bother ya'll since it is not you. Not now anyway. But by accepting it, you put yourself subject to it. You gurus are so wrong. So wrong. I can't believe you think this man is NOT the problem.

I understand your disgust. Any human being with an ounce of concern for other people would feel the same way. But did you know about any of this until you read this article? I didn't. I would venture to guess that most Americans didn't, and still don't. How do we know we can trust this writer? Or that this is actually true? I am not defending Maliki. Actually I don't trust him any further than any one of us could throw him, but if there ia any truth to this, even he deserves a trial. It's how we do things. It's part of our constitution, which we all honor, or should. It's the American way. The Iraqis have barely had a civilization until recently, just some vicious tribes who had to be vicious in order to fight off the viciousness of other tribes. The "Iraqi Way" is still a shameful thing, has not yet grown into an honorable or even a reliable way Iraqis can count on in their dealings with others. Evidence exists that shows there were once powerful nations in that area, with great leaders, decent values, including much more fairness for all people, but what became of them? Could that be America's fate if we don't put God back into our public arena? Actually, Iraq has come a long way in a short time, as far as joining the nations of the modern world. They are even now, as we speak, meeting with other nations in that area to present seminars to the leaders of those other nations about how to create a constitution. Now, where did they learn how to do that? Who taught them this? And whether or not we like him or approve of him, Maliki is a huge part of this. If it hadn't been him, who is to say another one would have been any better? I am not saying all Iraqis are lower than dirt or have no real human values. That's obviously not true. I am saying that the world is not always the wonderful place we hope it will become one of these days, maybe not in my lifetime, or maybe not in yours, but it is improving. And perhaps Maliki has to be a hard man to get all of this done. Of course, Iraq is moving forward far too slowly, but it is grinding forward at its own speed. There is no way to rush this. It has to happen in its own way and in its own time and at its own pace. It may take another thousand or more years before goodness and kindness and honesty and decency are everywhere in all human transactions and among all humans in their affairs. Maliki may just not be able to be all things to all people, perhaps just the right things for his country right now. Maliki is a product of his times and the area in which he grew up, and he is doing all he can to keep his country together in a very tough part of the world and in a very tough time in Iraq's growth and change to a much more civilized society. Iraq has come a long way, and even though I have no high personal regard for Maliki, he may have been the only man who could have stepped into that void and successfully done all that he has done or will do to bring Iraq into the modern world, to shift that country from being a backwater nation with no international regard whatsoever, to being one of the greatest nations on earth. This story isn't over yet. And until it is, I gave up long ago on judging Maliki too harshly and perhaps even prematurely.

Edited December 4, 2012 by Francie26

[billbill]

Disgusting....

[SocalDinar]

Kurdish Art, Film Events Bring Violence Against Women Into The Open

Despite an ongoing economic boom that has lured back many exiled Kurds, evidence suggests that the status of women in Iraq's northern Kurdish autonomous region has not witnessed similar improvements.

Reports of rape, domestic violence, honor killings, female genital mutilation, and self-immolation are still widespread throughout the traditionally conservative region.

A number of initiatives have been launched in the region in an effort to raise awareness of these problems.

In the governorate of Duhok, the Campaign to Combat Violence Against Women is bringing the message to the masses by displaying 29 paintings by 22 Duhok artists, not in a stuffy art gallery but in Dohuk city's busy bazaar.

The paintings depict women in a variety of roles and situations -- as objects of subjugation, as human beings whose voices are muffled, as nurturers, caregivers, and providers of hope.

“We wanted to use this event -- the first of its kind in Duhok Governorate -- to raise the awareness of the general public of the effects of violence being perpetrated against women," says organizer Hamdi Abdul Baqi.

"Our aim in exhibiting these paintings in the middle of the marketplace is to give the largest number of people the chance to see them and stop to look at them so that they can grasp the message each painting conveys.”

http://www.rferl.org/content/iraq-iran-kurdish-region-art-film-festivals-violence-against-women/24788855.html

Edited December 4, 2012 by SocalDinar

[happygilmore]

That's Iraq!

[DiveDeepSix]

And we are not shooting the rest of these animals for what reason? The ME has never left the stone ages, anyone who does this crap or knows about it but does nothing deserves a fate worse then death, I can think of many ways to make them wish they were dead.

[Snotrocket]

I don't understand this kind of brutality against anyone...but these are their own people...their own women. Why don't they look at these women and say to themselves... that could be MY wife or sister or daughter? Absolutely barberic. I guess you can bring a culture into the 21st century...but you can't make them let go of their 4th century mentality.

[R Veyron]

Sad, makes me want to burn my dinar and the sonner this thing is over the better.

[uncirculd]

Well Francie26, yes I have read quite a few articles about maliki and his brutality. It's just that I didn't block it out hoping to get an RV at any cost. It is no secret to me what kind of man or thing maliiki isl

[pokerplayer]

I darn near vomited. This is probably the hardest article I have ever read. The worst part is, if they get rid of Maliki, there is another snake to take his place.

I think I need a shower after reading this.

pp