Prepared Remarks for Boston University Iraq Workshop February 10, - - PDF document

Prepared Remarks for Boston University Iraq Workshop February 10, 2012 Mark Kukis Author of Voices from Iraq: A Peopleʼs History, 2003-2009 PhD Candidate in American History Boston University Iraqʼs Prison System I started covering Iraq for Time magazine in the fall of 2006, when sectarian violence was at its height. Timeʼs Baghdad bureau, as some of you may know, was in Karada, a central neighborhood of Baghdad across the Tigris River from the Green Zone. Time had a small villa inside a private compound protected by blast walls. We shared the grounds and pooled resources with several other media

• utlets, including NBC News and the Washington Post. It was

comfortable enough, and we were happy to be outside the Green Zone given that it was taking by then daily rocket and mortar fire. Our situation was not so much better, however. Twice suicide bombers drove truck bombs into the gates but were stopped there. Stray mortars caused us fear too. Virtually every night we could hear mortars sailing over our compound headed toward the Green Zone, fired from the southern neighborhood of Dora. But easily our biggest fear was the Iraqi security forces. At that time elements of the Interior Ministry police were a virtually transparent front for the Mahdi Army militia, which was fielding death squads


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every night across the city that left dozens of dead bodies strewn in the streets each morning. I discussed many times with my Iraqi bodyguards what would happen if Interior Ministry forces appeared at

• ur gates. They would most likely present paperwork to our guards

saying the compound needed to be searched for illegal weapons. It was no secret that we kept a small arsenal for our own protection, and they would have some cause for such a visit. The guards at the gate would be pressed to let the police inside. Once past the gate, the police could reach our villa perhaps before we could be warned, enter and begin going room to room. When they saw me or the other Westerners, they would insist that we come with them for questioning, perhaps taking Iraqi staff as well. Or perhaps they would not bother to pretend we were to be questioned. Perhaps they would simply seize us. Either way we would be effectively kidnapped and undoubtedly turned over to militia fighters in their ranks. The possibility of this scenario unfolding on any given night was all too real. So it was decided that the Interior Ministry forces must never be allowed to enter should they seek to do so. If they appeared at the gates with paperwork, our guard force was instructed to turn them away – and be prepared to stop them by force if necessary. We figured that we had enough men and weapons inside the compound to resist a halfhearted assault by Interior Ministry forces. If they really wanted to overrun us, however, they could. That was the reality. So like others across Baghdad, we lived in fear of the new government and its forces as darkness fell each night.


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We were lucky. Interior Ministry forces never came for us. But too many other people saw what happened in neighborhoods where they did appear. For many Iraqis a long nightmare began with the arrival

• f Interior Ministry forces in their area.

Maysoonʼs story was typical. In the spring of 2007, her husband Haytham went to work as usual one morning. Haytham owned a truck, and he made his living doing odd deliveries. On that day he was supposed to deliver government rations, and he left their house in central Baghdad about dawn. Shortly after Maysoon heard a commotion in the street outside. She looked and saw Iraqi security forces going house to house conducting a raid looking for suspected

• insurgents. They had a list of names, and they were making arrests.

Maysoon saw Haythemʼs truck there in the street, but he was not with

• it. She went down and spoke to an Iraqi officer, asking if her husband

had been arrested. He said no. Haytham was not on their list. He probably just stepped away for a moment, the officer said. Maysoon waited by the truck for an hour for Haytham. Then two. When he did not appear by noon she knew he must have indeed wound up arrested, and so began a long, horrible saga familiar to many Iraqis. For roughly a month Maysoon spent her days going to every police station and jail she could reach asking about Haytham. There was no sign of him on any of the jail rosters, and no one seemed to have a clue where he might be. Haytham had disappeared into the Iraqi


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prison system, which began overflowing with people in 2007 as Iraqi security forces conducted mass arrest sweeps chiefly in Sunni areas in an effort to quell insurgent violence. American troops were doing the same, sometimes working closely with Iraqi security forces. Tens

• f thousands of Iraqis were detained during this time. As of

November of 2007, roughly 30,000 Iraqis were imprisoned at American military detention facilities in Iraq. At least as many were imprisoned in detention facilities run by Iraqi authorities. Conditions at U.S. facilities were often abhorrent, as the world saw in the Abu Ghraib scandal. But conditions in Iraqi prisons under the new government were horrifying even by the standards of prisons run by Saddam Hussein. The world has never had a chance to see what goes on in Iraqi prisons, at least not in the way we saw with the revelation of abuses at Abu Ghraib. But Maysoon caught a glimpse in her search for Haytham. She saw up close the workings of a corrupt and brutal prison system that endures today as one of the darkest legacies of the U.S. occupation. After a month of searching without luck, Maysoon suddenly got a call from an official at a jail in a neighborhood far from hers. The jail

• fficial said Haytham was there and that she could come visit him.

Let me read you a quote from Maysoon when she described seeing Haytham in jail that first time. He didnʼt even look like the same man. Haytham had always been a big, muscular guy. Now he looked like a skinny rabbit. He was scared, like a caged animal. He


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was turning his head nervously left and right, and there were clear signs of abuse on him. His arm was broken. He had been beaten. He told me that they had been shocking his genitals with electricity. And he said he was certain they would never let him out, unless we figured

• ut a way to bribe someone.

I heard stories similar to this dozens of times when collecting oral history interviews about Iraqi experiences since 2003. Iraqi security forces would descend on a neighborhood and arrest men seemingly at random. Some disappeared forever, most likely winding up

• murdered. Those who lived fell into a matrix of overcrowded holding

cells and interrogation rooms until they managed to get word out to family where they were. Due process was virtually nonexistent. Rarely were there warrants or formal charges behind the arrests. And there were only two ways out for those detained. You could press for a hearing before a judge, taking your chances with the

• verburdened and ineffectual Iraqi court system. That process could

take years even if successful, but odds were not good. The other way was to bribe someone. Families who had a relative imprisoned would often gather all the money they could and find the right person to pay. In Maysoonʼs case that person, Haytham said, was a neighborhood man named Tʼaha. He had a reputation as someone connected to both the Mahdi Army and the Iraqi security forces. Rumor had it that


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Tʼaha was heavily involved in Sectarian violence and was among a group of militiamen who were allowed into Iraqi jails to interrogate and torture detainees. Maysoon contacted Tʼaha. He said for ten thousand dollars he could get Haythem out in a week. She managed to scrape together seven thousand by begging friends and family. She handed over the money hoping it would be enough. Tʼaha took it and said he would have Haytham free in fifteen days. But that never

• happened. Tʼaha was arrested shortly after taking the money,

Maysoon heard. Police caught him with a dead body in his car and implicated him in a fake checkpoint set up to capture and kill Sunnis. Tʼaha was gone, and so was the money. Meanwhile, Haythamʼs situation was growing bleaker. He developed some kind of skin condition. Wounds he suffered during abuse were never properly treated and seemed to be causing him problems. And he began to despair. He thought he would never get out, even though Maysoon had hired a lawyer and was making some progress through the official route. But time ran out. In early 2008, Maysoon got a call from the jail. Haytham had been dead for eight days, she was told. The family could collect his body at the morgue. That was

• it. Maysoon never found out exactly how Haytham died. She

suspects that infections from the abuse wounds poisoned his blood. But he might have gotten sick on bad food or simply murdered. She doesnʼt know, and she never will.


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This story is from 2007 and 2008. But I have no doubt similar stories continue to unfold today in Iraq, because the Iraqi prison system is still much the same now as it was then. Human Rights Watch recently issued a report underscoring this reality. Nearly 30,000 Iraqis remain today in government detention facilities, where reports

• f abuse are widespread. Some have spent years in custody without

charge or trial. The overcrowding problem worsened with the U.S. withdrawal, since American forces handed over the last of their prisoners to Iraqi authorities in leaving. Most disturbingly, Human Rights Watch uncovered evidence that more than 400 Iraqis were being held and tortured in at least one secret facility in Baghdad.‡ The existence of other secret prisons seems entirely likely. Prisons overflowing with men arrested simply for drawing suspicion from the government. Secret jails. Torture. These are the hallmarks

• f a brutal police state, which appears increasingly to be the ultimate

product of the U.S. enterprise in Iraq. The Iraqi prison system at work today arose during the U.S. occupation, chiefly as a means to absorb the masses of Iraqis arrested as part of an overall counterinsurgency

• campaign. American forces have withdrawn from Iraq. But the

United States remains committed to supporting the Iraqi government

• still. So long as it does, the United States is a party to all the abuses

and all the crimes that the government in Baghdad inflicts on Iraqi

• society. Thank you.

‡ Human Rights Watch Iraq Country Report, Jan. 2011, p. 2.


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