The man with the hood from Abu Ghraib speaks up

Lars Akerhaug interviews Haj Ali-al-qaysi

They made me stand on a box with a robe on my head and arms flat out in the air. They told me they would electrify me. I did not believe them. Then they took two wires and stuck them into my body. I felt like my eyeball was falling out. Then I fell to the ground.

This is the story of Haj Ali al-qaysi, the person pictured all over the world with a black robe as the pictures from Abu Ghraib was revealed. Before his troubles began with the Americans, Ali worked as a mukhtar, that is, a village chief, in his village in the Abu Ghraib district. He used to lecture in mosques; harvest dates and run a parking lot next to the local mosque.
Today, Haj Ali is far from a frightening figure. A warm looking man, it is difficult to imagine how he could be treated or sent to such a destiny as the hellish torture of Abu Ghraib.
“My first problems with the Americans”, tells Ali, “was when I took some empty land and converted it into a playground for the youngsters”. Ali tells that the Americans began bringing rubble from the airport area here, containing among other things human body parts and pornographic magazines. One of the local doctors began reporting of lots of injuries from poor locals, searching through the rubbish for valuables. “Before”, Ali jokes, “I was thinking that the American democracy would be a big playground. But instead they turned it into a rubbish storage for chemicals, human body parts and porn”.

As the responsible for the village he tried to complain about this problem to the municipality. “This”, tells Ali “was the beginning of the harassments”. 30th of October 11 o’ clock in the morning; he was taken away by soldiers in the street where he was working, and put in a hammer jeep. From there he was transported to al-amriyye, an ex-military base for the Iraqi Army and now converted into an American detention center. There he met with a Captain Phillips, who said that “I don’t know which agency has asked for your arrest, but you’ll be held here”. At that time many family members who had heard of his arrest had come to ask for his freedom. Captain Phillips so asked if Haj Ali believed that the people outside would attack. “I don’t know”, answered Ali.

He stayed there in two days, until morning on the third day of his detention, when he was transported with a bag over his head to the infamous Abu Ghraib prison. “Of course, at that time, I did not know where I was” Haj Ali tells. “Before entering into the prison I was inspected in a very humiliating procedure”. The procedure Haj Ali tells about lasted maybe an hour or and hour and a half. The Americans took fingerprints; eyes scan and live samples, before transporting him to an investigation room. “These rooms are actually lavatories,” says Ali, “flooded with sewer. Two interrogators and a translator sat away from me, away from the sewers”. Ali was forced to sit on the bottom of this shithole. The first question he was asked was: “Are you Sunni or Shia?” Ali was put aback. “It was the first time I had ever heard this question” he says, explaining that before in Iraq even in the personal status laws for marriage you are not asked by which religious school you belong.

Secondly, he was accused of attacking occupation forces. To explain, Haj Ali points to his fingers and shows a defect rendering him incapable of handling a gun. “I told them that I was not able to participate, and that they get the phone no. For the doctor who did the surgical operation.”

“Also they asked if I knew Osama Bin Laden”, Haj Ali continues. “I answered that I knew him from TV”. They continued to ask such questions, also about Saddam Hussein. “I felt like they were searching to charge me for something. “Then they said I was anti-Semite, to which I replied that I believe that the Semites are one of the fathers of humanity.” “You know what I mean”, replied one of the interrogators.

After this Haj Ali was told that his capturers knew he was an influential person, that he was a mukhtar in his village and he was asked “why don’t you co-operate with us, we might even give you an operation for your hand”. The interrogator continued to tell that “we are the greatest people of the world, we have occupied you and you should surrender and co-operate”.
As later became clear it seemed the capture of Haj Ali and many others sharing his fate was in fact not to “stop insurgency” but rather to capture intelligence and recruit loyal persons among important persons in local villages and tribal societies. However, Haj Ali did not comply and replied that “if you define yourself as occupiers, then resisting the occupation force is preserved in Islamic law as well as international”.’
His interrogators continued to ask if he would co-operate, for then to continue to threat to send him to a place where “dogs cannot live, or to Guantanamo”.
After this first questioning Haj Ali was put in a lorry, with bags over heads being distributed to the prisoners. One of the soldiers asked out “who are having bags on your heads?” One of the prisoners, a blind man, replied that he did not. This person had also been accused of attacking occupation forces. Then they were pulled down and transported to a place in the prison called “Fiji”. These places were tents, every five tents surrounded by barbed wire and then again by a 15 meter high wall. “Those who were here” says Ali, “were the ones the Americans called a “big fish”.

Haj Ali continues to tell about the living conditions. “Every tent has forty people inside, thee is no space, and if you want to sleep you have to sleep on your side. In all five tents about 300 persons lived.”

The prisoners was served by portable toilets, which meant that they had to stand in line for two or three hours, the bathroom would have been filled up with grease and excrement before your turn. Other sanitary functions barely existed; in every tent the prisoners’ daily shared 20 liter gallons for all necessities. To drink water they had to use bottles taken from the garbage. “The food was also of very bad quality” tells Haj Ali. “We did not have regular meals, and they enforced collective punishment for individual breaks of discipline. For instance if one spoke with a prisoner from another camp they’d deprive one camp of one meal or force them to stand for a long time in the sun.

”At this time” tells Ali, “one of the strange things that happened was with a Sadrist youngster, and his name was sheikh jaber-al-qadi. As all the other in the camp came from Sunni cities like Fallujah, Ramadi and Mosul, he felt isolated. To help mend this we asked him to be our prayer leader, and to call for prayer.” Ali tells that when this happened, the Americans grabbed him, asked “why do you pray with the Sunnis” and beat him up.

In this period Haj Ali also met with many groups from different prisons, for instance the Mosul or Baghdad Airport Prisons. He started to see and listen to stories of torture, torture marks; he even heard stories about injecting people with hallucination medicaments to make them see frightening things like scorpions or nightmarish images. I t was at this period that Haj Ali got the idea of forming an association to represent these prisoners.

After a while Haj Ali was interrogated again, and again threatened with being sent to Guantanamo or similar places. According to Haj Ali “female soldiers were present, showing parts of her body during interrogation”.
During Ramadan a new form of stress had to be endured by the prisoners. For Muslims the month of Ramadan means that you cannot eat between the rise of sun until it goes down. At this period, the second meal was brought to them just after the morning prayer, which meant that the prisoners had to watch the car waiting until 11 pm. “They intended to break our stamina” is how Haj Ali explains these proceedings, telling that “six electricity generators worked day and night, with a lot of noise. Each generator is connected only to three lamps, which means that they give almost no light, only noise. Of course, in tents there was no electricity”.

Then one day his number, 11716 was called, he was cuffed on hands and leg and his head covered with a bag, and then put in a hammer jeep. “When the sack on my head was removed, I saw a long corridor, heard a lot of people screaming from torture. They told me to take off my clothes, my gallabiyye (traditional Muslim men’s wear), then my undershirt and finally my underwear”. When he refused this, five of the soldiers took hold of him and forcefully stripped him.
After this he had to walk for like ten meters, before a staircase. “They wanted me to climb the staircase, but my foot were weak and I could not raise my legs. I fell and they started beating me. I then crawled the stairs. This took me one hour”.
After this Haj Ali was put against a wall and his hands tied to a doorframe in upright position. “Of course, again they beat me, poured urine and dirty water on me, wrote on me, pulled an empty gun at me, used a loud speaker to swear in my ear and clicked the hand cuffs in my ear. I stayed like this until the call for morning prayer”.

Come Morning Prayer, a person came and removed the head cover. He talked to Haj Ali with an Arab Lebanese accent and asked, “Do you know me?” “I am well known, I interrogated people in Gaza, the West Bank and in South Lebanon. I have a good reputation: Either I extract what I want or I finish him”.
He was removed of handcuffs and from one of his hands and hung crossover from top to down on at the door of the cell. “I am putting you in the position of the cross” said the interrogator. Now he endured more continuous beating, as well as dirty water. A gun was put in sensitive areas.

Also another person came and removed his head cover. “I could recognize his Arab accent as that of a maghrebi Jew (sephardi), and that is why we say we are victims of American-zionist occupation.

His situation continued like this for three days, changing positions, making him stand on his toes, being told that “his hand would rotten”.

“What I later understood” says Haj Ali, “was that what I was going through was part of an operation called “Iron Horse” aiming at collecting influential people, tribal leaders etc. to work for the occupation” In the third morning again he met with a foreign person, and again he was offered release to conduct operations. “I answered that I have nothing to say” tells Haj Ali. “During the whole period I heard screams, female screams, children screams, whoever would pass me in the hallway would smack me”.
After the midday prayer, they handcuffed him with the plastic strips, took him to a cell and handcuffed him to the bar, made him lay one his back and brought a large speaker. Then they put on the song “by the rivers of Babylon” over and over again, very loudly. “Of course” says Haj Ali, “at that time he wished that they would put the head-cover back on.”
Then after some time the interrogator came to remove the speaker, but Haj Ali could not hear anything. “I still heard the song even if they turned the music off”. Even if he was splashed with water on his head, “I could not hear a word of what the interrogator said”.
Then they made him stand up and extend his arm from the cell barriers and they handcuffed him in that position. “This was the fifth day without food”, tells Ali. So, after a while the interrogator came back and told him that they made a “reception party”. “Later”, tells Haj Ali, “I learned that this is someone everyone is forced through”.

I was put into cell no. 49, “They took a picture of me before they took away the bag-sack and then they took another picture.” “When I looked into the other cells opposed to me, I recognized one of them as an Imam. All of them were without any clothes.” “Don’t worry” they said. “We have been like this for three months”. Haj Ali tried to use some food wrappings as a hide, but the Americans did not let him do this.

”Everyone of us was given a nickname by the Americans” tells Haj Ali. “One of them was “Big Chicken”, another “Dracula”, there was “wolf man”, “Joker”, “Gilligan”. Myself, they called me “Colin Powell”.
Next day, one of the torture charged personnel, Specialist Charles Graner, one of the indicted from the Abu Ghraib scandal, came. Haj Ali had a bandage on his hand to cover a wound, the blood had coagulated. He took the bandage and tore it off his flesh so that it went off in one piece. Haj Ali fell unconscious. “Next day” continues Ali, “I asked one of the female soldiers for a pain killer. She told me to put my hand out from under the door. I thought she wanted to see the hand, but she stepped on it, and told him “this is the American pain-killer”.
After 15 days he was given a blanket. “I tried to use it to cover myself, and my friends congratulated me”. In this compound, called “the quarry” Haj Ali tells that he could hear screams, “when they wanted to send food for the female prisoners” Haj Ali goes on, “they sent naked men, to give to the women”. The female prisoners were hostages for brothers or fathers or sons. “We could hear their screams and do nothing but shout allahu akbar (God is the greatest)”.
After 15 days interrogations were speeded up, the Americans wanted to send them back to get new people, rotating between the quarries and the tents outside. One of his friends asked one of the female soldiers “Why do you humiliate us?”. She answered “this was the orders, to humiliate them in this position.”
After a while they took him to the interrogation room, he found ten people inside, some in military and some in civilian phones. They had telephones with cameras. “At that time I did not think this was possible, and thought they used the phones for recording sound or something” says Ali.
In this room the incident took place that later was screened around the world as an example of the torture malpractices of the American regime. “They made me stand on a box with a robe on my head and arms flat out in the air. They told me they would electrify me. I did not believe them. Then they took two wires and stuck them into my body. I felt like my eyeball was falling out. Then I fell to the ground.”
During this he bit his tongue, the doctor came with his shoe pushed his head-cover away, put water on it. “He saw no cut in the tongue” says Haj Ali, “so he told them to continue.” “Usually”, tells ALi, “the doctors were part of the torture process. They would tell if prisoners faked or exaggerated pains, telling the interrogators to go ahead.” Three times they took him to this room and electrified him five times.
They tied him hands and head to a tube in the ceiling, he stuffed some dry bread in his mouth. took some photographs of him, they took him into interrogation some times as well. During interrogation they would ask him “what do you think of more torture?” Haj Ali would answer that “the more you torture us, the higher our benefit from God will be”.
Haj Ali was not the only one mistreated in this way.” One of the things I saw” tells Ali, “was the imam of the largest mosque in Fallujah, he is 75 years old. They did not get enough of dragging him naked, but also put on female underwear.” “Another story” continues Haj Ali, “was one of the prisoners was ordered to pee, with a sack on his head. When his sack was removed, he saw his father, and this they took pictures of.”
“With the Imam of another mosque” tells Haj Ali, “one of the female soldiers took off her clothes in front of him and asked him to have sex with him. And because he of course refused, the female soldier would put on an artificial penis to rape the guy.”

Haj Ali tells that these prison camps are in fact training camps for the Resistance. “90% of those arrested was usually innocent” tells Haj Ali. “But once they get out they are fully ready to commence armed resistance against the occupiers. Anyone being treated like this or sees his brother or sister being treated like this will be.” Here Haj Ali also stresses the importance of understanding what impact on Arab societies such arrestment and treatment of women has.
After 49 days in the quarry, he overheard from his interrogators that he was arrested by fault and would be sent back to the tent. So the next day one of the soldiers fetched him and put him back to the tent camp. “You’re born again” he said. After going to the tents and being welcomed back Haj Ali tells that he “used two days looking at the sky, trying to make peace with light again, coming from the very dark cells”.
“During my time in cells I lost 38 kilos” tells Haj Ali. “This I can know because when we entered they put a wristband on me telling my weight.”
After this his belongings were returned to him, and he was put in a lorry with a head-sack but now without handcuffs. Then he was pushed out of the lorry. “When I removed the bag from my head I could see I was out on the highway. This is how I knew I were released.”

This is the end of Haj Ali’s story from Abu Ghraib. After he came out and the Abu Ghraib scandal was exposed he was trained for human rights by the UN. He wanted to use his experience to found an association, and went to the Iraqi government to get help, but was told that “there is no such thing as prison mistreatment”.

So they made a foundation conference, with many people and figures, and declared the Association of the Victioms of American Occupation Prisons. The objectives are to distribute info about torture and what is going on in these prisons, help out those who are released, and arrested family to contact arrested. The association is not only focusing on the Americans. “Many of the different prisons are run by private, by mercenaries”, tells Haj Ali. “there are people from all over the world. It is not only the Americans who are guilty”.
“All what is going on in Iraq is a very natural reaction to all these violations” says Haj Ali. “The so-called violence is a very natural response”, he continues. “In the era of Saddam, there were 13 prisons. Now there are 36 run by the government and 200 by the government militias. The Iraqi prisons are worse, we have seen documented cases of fingernail cutting and hand drilling, all under the acceptance of the US government.“
Haj Ali exclaims that “what is being committed in Iraq is a crime also against the European and American people, and they lose face. the torture is going on from all nationalities”. “I don’t blame anyone who grabs a foreigner or kidnaps him” Haj Ali says. “This is a reaction to what they suffered. His association is now working on physical and psychological rehabilitation.
This is not the end of Haj Ali’s story. He will come to Italy 1-2nd of October to tell it to the European Peace and Anti-war movement. And he will continue to tell to all those in the world who can listen about the American torture and malpractices.

Interview by Lars Akerhaug (Committee Free Iraq Norway). Thanks also to Dr. Hisham Bustani for making this interview possible.

http://www.antiimperialista.org/en/

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