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The CPT Report
None of the detainees at Abu Ghraib prison have seen a lawyer or received a visit. Altaai and one other person from the community were allowed to visit the teenagers who are held in a separate Baghdad prison. "It is so difficult for us to visit them," Altaai lamented. "The soldiers treat us badly, and they don’t allow us to be close to the detainees. They put a line and we have to stand about 10 meters away so we cannot talk freely with them. If only we could visit one of the prisoners, then we could get news about all of them." The al-Obaidi Brothers These three brothers, Ma’ad Khalil Hassan, Masseh Khalil Hassan, and Omar Khalil Hassan, were taken away from their family’s home in the first week of July 2003, leaving three women, four children, and the men’s mother, Zakia. Two of the men were taxi drivers and the third a carpenter. They are charged with an attack on U.S. forces. Sheikh Moayed of Baghdad’s Abu Hanifeh mosque insists that these charges are completely false. Zakia believes someone gave the U.S. authorities malicious information about her sons. U.S. forces raided the family in the middle of the night, dynamited the front gate and used flares to light up the whole house. “First we heard shooting,” says Zakia. The soldiers broke all the windows in the house and caused major structural damage to the front entryway. Several helicopters hovered overhead. The soldiers pointed guns at the whole family, including the children, and kept them under guard in the kitchen. Four soldiers kept their weapons trained on one of the women as they forced her to show them every possible hiding place in their house. When they entered Masseh’s room, a soldier shot into the pillow beside his face to wake him. They tied each man’s hands behind his back, put a sack over his head and forced him to kneel. A child who was present through all of this now shakes and has nightmares. He thinks the helicopters took away his father. “The soldiers said they were searching for weapons, but didn’t find any so took my sons instead,” says Zakia. The soldiers also took about 300,000 Iraqi dinars ($150), and the family’s supply of sugar and rice. Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) observed that there were few furnishings in the home. A television speaker was shot through. “We have nothing, we are poor, simple people,” Zakia told the soldiers. Ma’ad, Masseh, and Omar are being held in Bucca prison. Their family has gone to the U.S. military authorities and to the International Committee of the Red Cross but no further information about their status is available. When Zakia visited CPT in January 2004, they still had not been able to visit the men in prison. Ma’ad is 43 years old, Masseh is 36 and Omar is 32. Their sequence numbers are 115448, 115284 and 115286 respectively. The three brothers are charged with “Attack on Coalition Forces.” Mohammed Abbas Fraiyh Abd al Dulaimy The facts surrounding Mohammed’s disappearance were given to us by his father, Abbas Fraiyh: “I have searched the hospitals, the morgues, the human rights agencies, the forensic institutes. I have even started digging the ground around the graves of the dead in search of my son. “My son is 21 years old. He was an office worker in the Agricultural Department of the President’s Bureau. On April 5, he reported to work as was his duty. He never returned. “One day by chance, I picked up a video CD of news clips from the war. I saw the battle which took place in the neighborhood where my son’s office was, and I saw him being led out of his office with eight colleagues. I recognized him by the clothes he was wearing. The U.S. soldiers had put sacks over each of their heads and made them walk in a chain with each person’s hands on the next person’s shoulders. I saw the number on the vehicle of the Marine unit that invaded his office. The number was 123. “My son had no relation to the Ba’ath party, or any other political parties. The Coalition forces took civilian workers out of their offices. These people were not soldiers in the military. Why did they do this? These people were not fighting the U.S. “I went [twice] to Um Qasr prison camp [eight hours south of Baghdad] to look for my son. I wasn’t allowed in either time. There are many detainees at Um Qasr whom the Coalition says are not there. The Coalition doesn’t list their names where their families can find them. “There are several camps which the International Red Cross and other organizations are not allowed to enter. One official told me, ‘There are five VIP camps which we cannot enter unless the Coalition gives us the names of the people inside.’ They also told me that the Coalition is not providing them with the names of all detainees. There is no effort on the part of the Coalition Forces to follow the Geneva Conventions. “There are many, many prison camps for the Coalition. I can’t count them all. Some of them are in Qatar. Others are on the border of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. No one is allowed in these camps, and you can only find out they exist through underground radio networks. “I went to the Iraqi Assistance Center asking for information about my son. They told me, ‘We only have the names of detainees taken after May 1, 2003. For others, we cannot assist you.’ “I met a BBC reporter who took an interest in my son’s story, and he went to ask Paul Bremer where my son was. Bremer said, ‘Go to the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) and they will tell you where he is.’ So the reporter went to the IGC, but they gave him no help at all. Then the BBC reporter lost interest and didn’t do anything else to help me. “I did my best to find my son, but I didn’t succeed.”
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