"Symbol of Abu Ghraib Seeks to Spare Others His Nightmare," by Hassan M. Fattah - the New York Times, 11 March 2006 (registration required)
AMMAN, Jordan, March 8 — Almost two years later, Ali Shalal Qaissi's wounds are still raw.
There is the mangled hand, an old injury that became infected by the shackles chafing his skin. There is the slight limp, made worse by days tied in uncomfortable positions. And most of all, there are the nightmares of his nearly six-month ordeal at Abu Ghraib prison in 2003 and 2004.
Mr. Qaissi, 43, was prisoner 151716 of Cellblock 1A. The picture of him standing hooded atop a cardboard box, attached to electrical wires with his arms stretched wide in an eerily prophetic pose, became the indelible symbol of the torture at Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad. [The American military said Thursday that it would abandon the prison and turn it over to the Iraqi government.]
"I never wanted to be famous, especially not in this way," he said, as he sat in a squalid office rented by his friends here in Amman. That said, he is now a prisoner advocate who clearly understands the power of the image: it appears on his business card.
At first glance, there is little to connect Mr. Qaissi with the infamous picture of a hooded man except his left hand, which he says was disfigured when an antique rifle exploded in his hands at a wedding several years ago. A disfigured hand also seems visible in the infamous picture, and features prominently in Mr. Qaissi's outlook on life. In Abu Ghraib, the hand, with two swollen fingers, one of them partly blown off, and a deep gash in the palm, earned him the nickname Clawman, he said. [The International Herald Tribune version of Fattah's report adds here that "But prison records from the Coalition Provisional Authority that governed Iraq after the invasion in 2003, made available to reporters by Amnesty International, show that Qaissi was in American custody at the time the photograph was taken. Researchers with both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International say they have interviewed Qaissi and believe he is the man in the picture.
He is also one of the primary plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit filed against the military contractors Titan and CACI International, which supplied civilian interrogators for the prison. Amid the evidence in the lawsuit, his lawyers contend, is the blanket he wore like a poncho in the picture...."]
A spokesman for the American military in Iraq declined to comment, saying it would violate the Geneva Conventions to disclose the identity of prisoners in any of the Abu Ghraib photographs, just as it would to discuss the reasons behind Mr. Qaissi's detention.
But prison records from the Coalition Provisional Authority, which governed Iraq after the invasion, made available to reporters by Amnesty International, show that Mr. Qaissi was in American custody at the time. Beyond that, researchers with both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International say they have interviewed Mr. Qaissi and, along with lawyers suing military contractors in a class-action suit over the abuse, believe that he is the man in the photograph.
Under the government of Saddam Hussein, Mr. Qaissi was a mukhtar, in effect a neighborhood mayor, a role typically given to members of the ruling Baath Party and closely tied to its nebulous security services. After the fall of the government, he managed a parking lot belonging to a mosque in Baghdad.
He was arrested in October 2003, he said, because he loudly complained to the military, human rights organizations and the news media about soldiers' dumping garbage on a local soccer field. But some of his comments suggest that he is at least sympathetic toward insurgents who fight American soldiers.
"Resistance is an international right," he said.
Weeks after complaining about the garbage, he said, he was surrounded by Humvees, hooded, tied up and carted to a nearby base before being transferred to Abu Ghraib. Then the questioning began.
"They blamed me for attacking U.S. forces," he said, "but I said I was handicapped; how could I fire a rifle?" he said, pointing to his hand. "Then he asked me, 'Where is Osama bin Laden?' And I answered, 'Afghanistan.' "
How did he know? "Because I heard it on TV," he replied.
He said it soon became evident that the goal was to coax him to divulge names of people who might be connected to attacks on American forces. His hand, then bandaged, was often the focus of threats and inducements, he said, with interrogators offering to fix it or to squash it at different times. After successive interrogations, he said he was finally given a firm warning: "If you don't speak, next time, we'll send you to a place where even dogs don't live."
Finally, he said, he was taken to a truck, placed face down, restrained and taken to a special section of the prison where he heard shouts and screams. He was forced to strip off all his clothes, then tied with his hands up high. A guard began writing on his chest and forehead, what someone later read to him as, "Colin Powell."
In all, there were about 100 cells in the cellblock, he said, with prisoners of all ages, from teenagers to old men. Interrogators were often dressed in civilian clothing, their identities strictly shielded.
The prisoners were sleep deprived, he said, and the punishments they faced ranged from bizarre to lewd: an elderly man was forced to wear a bra and pose; a youth was told to hit the other adults; and groups of men were organized in piles. There was the dreaded "music party," he said, in which prisoners were placed before loudspeakers. Mr. Qaissi also said he had been urinated on by a guard. Then there were the pictures.
"Every soldier seemed to have a camera," he said. "They used to bring us pictures and threaten to deliver them to our families."...
After almost six months in Abu Ghraib, Mr. Qaissi said, he was loaded onto a truck, this time without any shackles, but still hooded. As the truck sped out of the prison, another man removed the hood and announced that they had been freed.
With a thick shock of gray hair and melancholy eyes, Mr. Qaissi is today a self-styled activist for prisoners' rights in Iraq. Shortly after being released from Abu Ghraib in 2004, he started the Association of Victims of American Occupation Prisons with several other men immortalized in the Abu Ghraib pictures.
Financed partly by Arab nongovernmental organizations and private donations, the group's aim is to publicize the cases of prisoners still in custody, and to support prisoners and their families with donations of clothing and food.
Mr. Qaissi has traveled the Arab world with his computer slideshows and presentations, delivering a message that prisoner abuse by Americans and their Iraqi allies continues. He says that as the public face of his movement, he risks retribution from Shiite militias that have entered the Iraqi police forces and have been implicated in prisoner abuse. But that has not stopped him.
Last week, he said, he lectured at the American University in Beirut, on Monday he drove to Damascus to talk to students and officials, and in a few weeks he heads to Libya for more of the same.
Despite the cruelty he witnessed, Mr. Qaissi said he harbored no animosity toward America or Americans. "I forgive the people who did these things to us," he said. "But I want their help in preventing these sorts of atrocities from continuing."
Some months ago the English language edition of Der Speigel printed a profile of an Iraqi living in Amman whom it identified as the man in the 'poncho' in the Abu Ghraib abuse photos. I didn't post it because the reporter didn't explain whether or how she had confirmed the man's identity. I'll see if I can find it again; if I do, I'll post a link to it.
Added 12 March 2006 - this is the Der Spiegel article. On the second reading, it still bothers me that all of the details "Hajj Ali" gave in introducing himself to the Der Spiegel reporter could have been taken from public accounts of Abu Ghraib, and the reporter doesn't seem to have verified anything independently; but what "Hajj Ali"/ Ali al-Shalal Abbas says about his background and arrest does coincide with what Ali Shalal Qaissi told the NYT reporter. (According to the NYT report, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch investigators have checked Qaissi's story and believe he's telling the truth.)
"A Tale of Two Lives Destroyed by Abu Ghraib," by Marian Blasberg and Anita Blasberg - Der Spiegel (English online edition), 26 Sept 2006
Hajj Ali sits on the sofa in a hotel room in Amman, Jordan. He was released from Abu Ghraib 16 months ago. It's a beautiful summer day, but he keeps the curtains drawn -- girls are lounging in bikinis at the pool below.
Hajj Ali reaches for a pack of cigarettes with his right hand and uses his lips to extract a Marlboro. Then he starts up his laptop and calls up an Iraqi Web site, albasrah.net, that shows the pictures from Abu Ghraib. He scrolls through the site, pausing occasionally: "Here," says Hajj Ali, "this is Abu Hudheifa, the imam, lying in the hallway with his gunshot wounds. Or here, Sabrina Harman, bending over the dead from the shower room."
Hajj Ali speaks slowly and quietly. His voice sounds a little hoarse.
"Graner," he says, "that pig."
He scrolls down to a picture of a man standing on a box wearing nothing but a black blanket, his upper body bent forward slightly, his arms attached to wires and a hood over his head. Hajj Ali swallows and zooms in on one of the hands. "Look," he says, "something isn't right about the hand; it seems injured."
Hajj Ali says he is convinced that he is the man in this picture....
When the Americans came, he says, he knew they would pick him up sooner or later -- just like the many who had already been taken away in the preceding weeks. It was October 14, 2003, five months after the end of the war, a Tuesday, and the smell of winter was already in the air.
On the day of his arrest, Hajj Ali was wearing a green shirt over his dishdasha. He was on his way to his parking lot, where he rented parking spaces to people visiting a mosque on the outskirts of Al Madifai near Baghdad. Hajj Ali heard the sound of heavy engines behind him and he turned around to see a group of Humvees bearing down on him. He was quickly encircled, and 20 soldiers jumped onto the sidewalk, pulled out their weapons, handcuffs and a hood, and pushed him to the ground. "Are you Hajj Ali?" they demanded.
Then everything went black.
Ali al-Shalal Abbas, nicknamed Hajj ever since he completed the pilgrimage to Mecca a few years earlier, lay in the truck bed, trying to remain calm. Don't be afraid, he said to himself, you haven't done anything wrong.
He heard passerby yelling as the truck drove away. He is a respected man in Al Madifai, a section of Abu Ghraib, a city of 300,000 not far from Baghdad. Before the Americans came, he was a local leader, a Mukhtar -- a sort of community representative to the authorities. Hajj Ali cannot say how long the trip took. All he sensed was the odor of gasoline, the jolts of bumpy roads and the pain in his left hand, which he had injured at a wedding when he shot into the air with his father's shotgun. The magazine exploded, severing his tendons and slicing off two fingertips; the wound was still fresh.
At some point they pushed him out of the truck and chained him to a fence, and he heard Iraqis in the dark. Hajj Ali asked: "Where are we?"
"I think this is Abu Ghraib," another man whispered....
Hajj Ali crouches in a corner of his cell. A few days ago they gave him a blanket, a piece of black material with fringes, which he has tied together to make into a cloak....
They open his cell door. "Hajj, your number!" "One-five-one-seven-one-six." "Okay. Investigation."
They tie his hands and place a hood over his head. For the first time since he has been in this wing, Hajj Ali is truly afraid. Things have gotten worse in recent weeks, ever since the revolt and especially since the evening Abu Hudheifa, the Syrian imam, shot at a guard with a pistol he had smuggled in.
The guard shot back, five bullets, and then they came and searched the cells, beating Hajj Ali while the imam bled to death in the corridor. To Hajj Ali, it seemed as if they were not just searching for weapons, but looking for ways to retaliate....
"Clawman, you've been trying our patience for weeks," says a voice. "We've had enough of this. If you don't give us some names, you'll get to know our other methods."
"Sir, I cannot name any names."
One of the guards pulls off his hood and points to a bunch of wires dangling from the ceiling, red wires and blue wires, with copper rings attached to the ends. Then he drags him a few steps closer to the wall, where there is a box on a floor, the kind of cardboard box filled with food that Hajj Ali has sometimes been forced to carry. Finally, the guard removes his handcuffs and places the copper rings around his fingers. Then he puts the hood back on, and someone says: "You have to get up on the box now. Stay up there. If you fall off, there will be electricity."
Hajj Ali climbs onto the box, cautiously feeling his way. Once he is standing, he lifts his arms to keep his balance, begins swinging his arms, starts to sway, and feels the box giving way beneath his heavy body. There is silence in the room.
"Clawman, if you want to talk, then talk now."
He stands there for one minute, two minutes, three minutes. He says nothing, and then he sees cameras flashing through the hood. Suddenly he feels the current shooting through his veins, and it's as if his eyes were being torn from their sockets. His teeth grind together, everything shakes and trembles, and he falls onto his left hand, the injured one.
Hajj Ali lies on the floor, almost unconscious, and he hears people laughing. Then someone takes his pulse and says: "He's okay. Continue."...
Also see:
"Abu Ghraib Prisoner Seeks Justice One Year After Scandal" - AFP, 26 April 2006, as carried by the Khaleej Times (Dubai, UAE)
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....
"The Spectre of Abu Ghraib" - interview with Sigifrido Ranucci (in Amman) for Rai (Italian state-supported radio and television), 22 Feb 2006. This passage struck me as odd:
Q: Have you ever heard testimony of abuses committed by Italians?
A All the jails in Iraq are under American control. Two private companies, Caci International and Titan Corp. had contracts with mercenaries of various nationalities who were responsible for getting information from the prisoners.
… An Iraqi diplomat who was arrested, Haitham Abu Ghaith, spoke many languages, including Italian. This man told me that he had heard two of the men interrogating him speaking Italian...
Q: And what types of torture did he say he suffered?
A: “Every type of torture. The same done by the Americans were also done by Italian contractors.”
Corriere della Sera picked up on that:
"Hooded Man of Abu Ghraib Claims: Some Interrogators Were Italian" - Corriere della Sera (English-language "Italian Life" Web site), 23 Feb 2006
ROME – The ghost of Abu Ghraib has spoken and is pointing the finger at Italy.The man in the black cloak photographed in the prison of shame with electrical wires attached to his hands has revealed for the first time,“I found out from an Iraqi diplomat, who was also being held there, that two people were speaking Italian while they tortured him.He knows your language very well”. That’s not all.“In Iraq, Italians stole money and archaeological remains”.Later in the evening, a denial arrived from the prime minister’s office.“The government is not aware of any Italian citizens at Abu Ghraib and, even if there were, rules out absolutely that they could have been members of the armed forces or civil servants."...
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