Demos against PoW abuse; Iraqi inmates speak at n-conference

By: Hamoud Kufi/ Abdullah

BAGHDAD/ ISTANBUL: Massive demonstrations were held in Baghdad and Istanbul like other global parts on Sunday against the Iraq abuse by US soldiers as non-governmental organizations in Iraq and an American Christian group said torture, abuse and humiliation of detainees is widespread in US-run detention centers and not limited to a few cases.

Holding portraits of Ayaat, clerics as well as prisoners who were abused, thousands of protestors were chanting anti US slogans.

Meanwhile, US vice President Dick Cheney rushed to the aid of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- under fire over Iraqi prison abuses -- by saying people should “get off his case” and let Rumsfeld do his job.

Speaking at a news conference in Baghdad, a spokeswoman for the Iraqi Human Rights Organization (IHRO) told: “We are here to tell the world that the cases of torture of Iraqi prisoners are not isolated incidents and they are not limited to Abu Gharib prison, nor to the six US MPs.”

President Bush has said the acts were “the wrongdoing of a few” and did not reflect the character of the 200,000 military personnel who have served in Iraq. But rights groups disputed those assertions.

People who said they had been victims of torture and relatives of detainees told the news conference of their degrading treatment in the US prisons.

Kimmitt told a separate news conference all allegations would be investigated.

Stewart Vriesinga of the Christian Peacemakers Team said: “The primary objective is to point out that there are systematic abuses taking place in the American prisons. Iraqis are treated in a dehumanized way.”

Issam al-Hammad said the Americans came to his village near al-Qaim on the Syrian border looking for his father, Abid Hammad al-Mahoosh. He wasn't there, so they took Issam and his three brothers, the youngest of them age 16. Al-Hammad, who is in his late 20s, said: “I was naked apart from my underpants and they poured water on my back and then electrified me with an electrical stick.”

“They told me if you don't talk we will bring your mothers and sisters here,” al-Hammad said. “Our father handed himself to the Americans three days after we were arrested. For two months he was tortured, and when he died because of the torture they dropped his body at the front gate of a hospital and left him there.”

“We are not looking for compensation. We want to expose what happened to our father to the rest of the world and make sure other detainees won't suffer like us,” al-Hammad said.

Najim Abdul-Majid, 45, a Baghdad shop owner detained with his 17-year-old son last August, said during interrogation his captors would chain him to the ceiling for three hours. “Beating and humiliation was the norm,” he said. “Once they took me to watch my son being tortured with electricity. He was tied to a pole while two wires were dangled on his back.”

Separately, the Washington Post reported Saturday the Defense Department last year approved interrogation techniques for use at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba that include forcing inmates to strip naked and subjecting them to loud music, bright lights and sleep deprivation. Similar methods have been approved for use on detainees in Iraq, the Post said.

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