Indy
It's going to get worse
Mon Aug 30, 2004 21:32
24.12.199.100

American Lawyer Finds New Evidence of Recent Torture in Iraq

"Attorney Shareef Akeel's fact-finding mission to Iraq yielded testimony from 50 plaintiffs implicating American personnel in instances of abuse, torture and rape committed at US-run detention facilities as recently as last month."

http://newstandardnews.net/content/?action=show_item&itemid=911

"During the course of his investigation in Iraq, Akeel said, clear patterns emerged. According to Akeel, testimonials gathered individually from former captives held in US prisons all over Iraq indicate many of the common methods came into use across disparate, geographically distant detention centers.

Perhaps the most disturbing evidence Akeel found suggesting an overarching policy of abuse comes in the form of first-hand accounts that captors singled out religiously observant prisoners for particularly harsh abuse.

Akeel said former detainees told him that upon arrival at a US-run facility, they were each given a questionnaire asking them about their religious affiliation as well as their vices. In Akeel’s words, the questions included: "Are you Sunni? Are you Shia? Do you drink? Do you not drink? Do you have a girlfriend?" Akeel said he found a consistent pattern among the cases: the stricter the religious observance a detainee reported to his captors, the more severe the treatment he would receive at their hands.

Akeel provided several examples of religious desecration, including stories of men who had purified themselves in an Islamic absolution ritual only to be subsequently doused with beer and alcohol by captors. At one prison, plaintiffs told Akeel, captors hung a picture of a pig on the wall toward which prisoners faced to worship and told them, "Pray to your pig."

In one horrific case recounted to Akeel, a naked woman wearing a strapped on sexual device raped an elderly man while he was fasting. The man said the woman came in silently behind him, "wearing a belt with a penis," Akeel relayed. The man told Akeel he could not determine whether his assailant was an American MP or a private contractor"