Former prisoners, guards tour torture chambers, prisons

Depths of Saddam's evil plumbed

Former prisoners, guards tour torture chambers, prisons

Against the backdrop of blood-stained torture chambers, the gruesome tales of liberated Iraqis have transformed the maniacal brutality and executions of Saddam Hussein from myth to hard reality.

"Millions of people were killed here," a former Iraqi guard told a correspondent with British newspaper The Independent while walking around the notorious Abu Ghraib Prison with others familiar with the operations at the facility.

The sprawling complex of barred cells, razor wire and watch towers about 32 miles west of Baghdad housed up to 75,000 prisoners at one time, according to the paper. Their fate ranged from a merciful bullet to the back of the head to the hangman's noose.

Inside the complex, nooses and black bags used to cover prisoners' heads lay on the floor. On the walls of the holding cells, names and dates of men waiting to die were scratched into the cement.

Instead of steps, a ramp led up to the gallows.

"If there were steps, the prisoner would have known that he had reached the end and may have struggled," another man explained.

According to the Iraqis, Wednesday was the day for killing and Thursday was the day relatives paid to collect the bodies of the dead.

"If they had been shot, the relatives would only get the bodies if they paid for the bullets," he said. "If not, the government would bury the bodies in a grave with up to 50 other prisoners," said Mahmood Mriar.

The Independent reports that while some of the inmates were sentenced for "normal" crimes, many were political prisoners – often Shias from the south or else the slum of Saddam City in Baghdad – sent there for allegedly conspiring against the state.

More telltale evidence of the regime's evil surfaces at Iraq's Military Intelligence Directorate in the northwestern suburb of Kadimiya, reports USA Today, including bookshelves full of pictures of slain Iraqis, with their necks slashed, their eyes gouged out and their genitals blackened.

''This is the place where Saddam made people disappear,'' an Iraqi soldier named Iyad Hussein told the paper. ''It is a chamber of death.''

Of the few survivors, many are returning to the torture chambers that were abandoned by the Iraqi guards ahead of the arrival of coalition forces.

''I was beaten, refrigerated naked and put underground for one year because I was a Shiite and Saddam is a Sunni,'' Ali Kaddam Kardom, 37, told USA Today. He said he was arrested in the central city of Karbala on March 10, 2000.

The Gulf News caught up with Sheikh Lami Abbas Ajali as he inspected Nassiriya Detention and Security Center where he spent several bleak weeks of his life in March 1996. Ajali recounted how he was hit, prodded, had his eyelids pulled back and electric shocks applied to his temples and genitals.

According to Ajali, torturers stuffed 10 suspects into an eight-foot by six-foot room so only two could sleep at any given time while the other eight were forced to stand.

Like Kardom, Ajali said his crime was being a Shiite Muslim, which was viewed suspiciously by the Sunni-dominated regime.

Ajali told the paper that on the day he was taken into custody, three plainclothes secret police came to his mosque and quietly and politely asked him to come with them.

"They took me in a decent, quiet way," he said. "Then the torture started."

During interrogation sessions Ajali said guards pressed him on whether he had links to Iran – a stronghold of the Shiite faith – whether he was a member of the Iranian Duaa Party, what his beliefs were and whether he was plotting against Saddam. He denied their accusations. His torturers forced him to repeat slogans praising Saddam and to join the Baath party, which he did - all to survive, he said. After signing some papers without knowing what they said, Ajali was released.


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