The Advocate
Andrew Stromotich - Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches


[Partridge: Long, but worth the read]


On September 29, 2005, shortly after 8 p.m., Amal Kadhum Swadi, and her youngest son Safa were arrested by U.S. forces in the Ghazaliya district of Baghdad on suspicion of planting an improvised explosive device.

They were just leaving their Baghdad home with other family members, and had opened their garage door to take out the family car, when the Swadi family were swarmed by multiple Humvees and numerous heavily armed U.S. Soldiers with weapons drawn.

Haloed by headlights and surrounded by agitated soldiers, mother and son were separated from each other and hidden from view of other family members behind a wall of troops and humvees. They were blindfolded and handcuffed tightly with the plastic zap straps and hoods that have become potent symbols of the dehumanization of Iraqis under occupation.

Ms. Swadi and Safa were made to squat on the highway’s dirt embankment while Zaid, her eldest son, was issued a handwritten receipt for his mother and brother. As Zaid yelled into the crowd of soldiers, trying to get response from his mother, Ms. Swadi and Safa were being packed into humvees for the trip to the Airport Detention Facility for further processing, leaving Zaid in a cloud of dust, clutching his receipt and trying to console his sobbing sister.

I first met Amal Swadi in Istanbul, at the culminating session of The World Tribunal on Iraq. Ms. Swadi was part of the Iraqi delegation invited to give testimony on their experiences of occupation; as a lawyer representing women held in Abu Ghraib and other U.S. and British detention facilities in Iraq, Ms. Swadi was there to speak on the degenerating state of human rights.

As I found out, Ms. Swadi is no stranger to the occupation, or the media covering it. As a lawyer willing to take on the mass of occupation, she is well known for her outspoken advocacy for those unfortunates caught in the machinery of occupation.

Amal Swadi is 52, and was accompanied to the Istanbul tribunal by her daughter, and eldest son Zaid, who is also a lawyer. At the events opening party, I was presented to Ms. Swadi and Zaid, whose love and respect for his mother were instantly apparent. He studied me closely as I was introduced, and when I put my hand out to shake his mother’s, he smiled and took it warmly.

Ms. Swadi, a humble religious woman, immediately forgave my lack of understanding of Islamic culture, and after a short conversation, agreed to be interviewed (the video of this interview will be available shortly).

Ms. Swadi’s involvement with investigations into female prisoners of the occupation started when she was told about a message the women detained in Abu Ghraib were trying to get to the resistance. The message, which had become public knowledge in the streets of Bagdad, was begging the resistance to attack Abu Ghraib with rockets, as the women held inside had given up hope, and could no longer bare the gross abuses and torture inflicted upon them daily. In Islam, as in Christianity, suicide is regarded as an ultimate sin, so these women were asking to be killed. Since then, Ms. Swadi has tirelessly worked for the recognition and release of these detainees (at the time I met her, she was representing nine of these shadow women).

Ms. Swadi told me of her visits to Abu Ghraib, and the difficulties she experienced in trying to gain access to the women held inside, including U.S. force’s outright denial of the women’s existence. When attempts to intimidate her did not work, dismissive guardsmen simply turned her away. When Ms. Swadi returned to Abu Ghraib for her second visit, she was accompanied by a determination cast in the previous sleepless night. Her resolve was eventually rewarded, and after waiting all day in one of the compound’s courtyards under the desert sun, without water or food, she was finally allowed access to her clients (six in total). Ms. Swadi told me the emotion of the experience was overwhelming, and she broke down and sobbed along with the first detainee presented.

Detainees were presented to her in a small, dark cement room that looked to be set up for interrogations. The women were escorted into the room through a heavy door behind a chair and desk. The guards accompanying her remained inches from these broken souls throughout the visits (it is referred to as being ‘in control’ of their subject).

The first detainee presented was a young woman in her 20’s. She was in poor condition, pale and gaunt, barely able to stand, and looked to be suffering from mental collapse. The woman stared at the floor, and when she did finally look up and see her visitor from the outside world, the two broke down.

During her brief interview, hindered not only by the woman’s captors who hovered only inches away at all times, but also by the woman’s fragile, quivering voice, Ms. Swadi learned how this woman’s young son and brother were killed in front of her during a raid on her home conducted by U.S. forces. She carried a crudely stitched wound the length of her forearm, which came from the bayonet of a soldier involved in the raid.

Since her arrest, the woman had been held naked in a small cement cell, without proper bedding or toilet. The woman spoke of rape and torture at the hands of her American and Iraqi captors. With Congress being presented with the images of Iraqi women forced to bare themselves as U.S. soldiers held guns to their heads, and with the Pentagon’s own acknowledgment of rape in their detention facilities, it is not hard to give credence to Ms. Swadi’s claims.

General Antonio Taguba, appointed to head the Pentagon’s investigation into Abu Ghraib torture and abuse allegations (which was restricted to investigation into members of the 800th Military Police Brigade), acknowledged that U.S. soldiers participated in rape at the prison. This acknowledgment came in the form of an inter-Pentagon memo in which General Taguba referred to images of American guards ‘having sex’ with female Iraqi detainees. Mr. Taguba’s choice of language when referring to rape is revealing, and further clarifies the Pentagon’s desensitized, casual attitude towards these crimes.

These images clearly depict violent sex crimes, with one congressman who was given access to these images collected by the Pentagon, stating that he believes the release will spark massive demonstrations and endanger Americans abroad (hardly the image of ‘consensual sex’ alluded to by Taguba).

General Taguba also reported that U.S. soldiers made videos of these violent sex crimes, a common practice amongst sex offenders, who often take trophies from their crimes to help them relive the event later (it is a practice that has aided greatly in the prosecuting of sex offences and will hopefully do the same in these cases). General Taguba has also acknowledged at least two pregnancies resulting from these sex crimes involving female detainees in Abu Ghraib.

With a recent attempt by the Senate to ban the Pentagon’s use of torture, and President Bush’s response of threatened veto of this bill, along with White House negotiations to exempt the CIA from any restraint with regards to torture, the image of a systematic use of torture becomes illuminated. For those already aware of the Phoenix Operation and the CIA’s past publication of torture manuals, this comes as no surprise.

On January 27, 1997, Baltimore Sun journalists Gary Cohn, Ginger Thompson, and Mark Matthews ran a story in their paper under the headline “Torture was taught by CIA”. The reporters relied heavily on two manuals printed by the CIA, and released under pressure from the Sun’s 1994 freedom of information challenge. The first manual, entitled KUBARAK Counterintelligence Interrogation- July 1963, along with the updated Human Resources Exploitation Training Manual-1983 Human Resources Exploitation Training Manual-1983, paint a picture of decades of CIA torture policy.

Although the Pentagon has maintained that these manuals were created only for educational purposes, in order to help U.S. troops identify torture facilities, the manuals themselves refute this position.

Contd...