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The CPT Report
Dr. Ali assumed that the camp he was taken to was under the auspices of U.S. military intelligence. Upon entry, guards took his picture, did an eye print, took fingerprints, and, with their computer, printed out a wristband that gave him a prisoner of war number. While he was there he tried to find ways to resist being dehumanized by his experience. Guards put him in a small cell about the same size as his earlier cage. “As a biologist I prefer not to call my humiliating confinement a ‘cell,’ one of the essential building blocks of all of life which God had called ‘good.’ And I made friends of the guards. I refused to call them my enemy.” For five days he stayed in solitary confinement before he was able to question guards about the reason for his arrest. Ten days later guards gave him a pencil and paper to write the anonymous person in charge to ask that same question. “Two men came the next day and told me, ‘We didn’t know you were here. Sorry, you shouldn’t be here.’ I replied, ‘So, let me go home.’ They answered, ‘This bureaucratic system won’t easily get you released.’ ‘Will I be here for days or weeks?’ I asked. They said, ‘We don’t know.’” Some time later, after he gave up hope for an early release, guards took him to another location where three people questioned him for two hours. One he knew as Brenda, one of the interrogators from last summer. They admitted that some of the questions were the same. After they asked questions, he wrote the answers, and they sent the report to Washington, D.C. Dr. Ali commented after his release, “They are looking for ‘true lies,’ which don’t exist.” This was the only time during his confinement that he was questioned. Some days later, guards came to his room and said he could go home. After 38 days in detention he arrived on his doorstep and greeted his surprised and delighted wife, son, and daughter. At the university, colleagues and students sacrificed three sheep to recognize his return, a ritual reminiscent of Abraham’s sacrifice and often done after a person goes through a grueling event. * * * We listened to the stories of men who had recently been released. On February 13, 2004, a group of us went to visit “Ahmed,” a 52 year-old farmer who lives on the outskirts of Baghdad. He was detained and tortured by U.S. forces at the end of January. Ahmed has 8 children. His youngest son is 11 years old. He grows vegetables, wheat, rice and beans, and was a driver for the Ministry of Irrigation. He asked us not to use his real name for fear of punishment from the U.S. military. The following is a summary of his story: “One day, at the end of January, I was inside my house when there was an explosion about 2 km. away. We went to the mosque to pray because it was a Friday. When we finished the prayers, we saw helicopters everywhere and we heard the news that the Americans came to my house and arrested my nephew who was visiting from another city. I told everyone in my family we did nothing, so they would release him. “My son lives in the next house. They searched his house and took his money. When they finished checking his house they were waiting for us. They arrested us and asked us if we did this explosion. We said no. They asked us do you know who did it and we said no. The soldiers said either tell us you did it, or tell us who did it. “They handcuffed me and pulled me by the back of my collar to their car. They beat us and kicked us with their shoes. They put bags over our heads so we couldn’t see who was beating us. “On the way to the camp, I asked for water and they beat me on the head with the bottle of water. I fell down when I was getting out of the car and somebody lifted me under my arms and threw me to the ground. They lined us up against a wall. Somebody kicked me, my head jerked and banged into the wall, I fell down. “They took us at 1:00 p.m. and we reached the camp at 5:30 p.m. For four days we only had water, no food. And for all this time we were outside, not under a roof, and we can see nothing because we were wearing hoods. “After I hit the wall with my head and fell down they handcuffed me with my hands behind my back lying on my stomach. (Ahmed shows us his wrists. They are ringed with pink scar tissue.) They kept me in this position through the night and into the next day—almost 24 hours—and we weren’t allowed to move our legs in that time. We could not sleep during that time because they always kicked us. I don’t know for sure, but I think they did this for a purpose, as a way to torture us and not give us a chance to sleep. “Look at this. (His wife brings in a white tunic. Numbers were written in black marker across the front of the tunic.) This is what they wrote on me, to identify me. “During these 24 hours, they brought some dogs. I could hear them searching and doing things with them. They didn’t bite me but I could hear the screams of other people, so I thought they were being bitten. “There was a translator and I tried to tell him that we couldn’t feel our hands—it feels like they are cut—and he said that’s the way it is. The next day, they made us sit cross-legged with our hands handcuffed behind our backs and hooded. The soldiers came and kicked us on the kneecaps and you could hear them laughing. I was so tired, but if I started to fall asleep they kicked me. “When you asked the translator to go to the toilet the soldiers shouted at you and kicked you. You had to ask 10 to 15 times before they let you go. When you reached the toilet, they released your hands but you could not use them—they had no feeling in them and wouldn’t bend—so sometimes you couldn’t control yourself.
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