http://snipurl.com/9t48 The Pentagon plans to promote Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, former head of military operations in Iraq, risking a confrontation with members of Congress because of the prisoner abuses that occurred during his tenure...
--------------- http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/101604H.shtml The Last Woman Prisoner Released from Abu Ghraib Testifies to Tortures By Cécile Hennion, Le Monde (Translation by t r u t h o u t French language correspondent Leslie Thatcher) Tuesday 12 October 2004 Houda al-Azzawi, imprisoned for seven months in the American prison, talks about the brutality of tortures inflicted by the guards. "Me, I like Saddam Hussein!" When she expresses her views, Houda Al-Azzawi doesn't mince any words. "That doesn't mean that I participate in the resistance, still less that I was or am a terrorist." Accused of financing the armed insurrection, Houda Al-Azzawi was imprisoned for over seven months in the Abu Ghraib prison. This experience has produced an enduring rancor towards the Americans. That doesn't prevent her from condemning "the criminal actions" of a grouplike Moussab Al-Zarkaoui's Tawhid wal Djihad (Unity and Holy War). By parading their hostages in orange coveralls imitating those of the Guantanamo detainees, by beheading American Nick Berg when the tortures' scandal broke, Tawhid wal Djihad presented itself as the Iraqi prisoners' avenging organization. The group has also kidnapped and beheaded two American engineers, as well as Briton Kenneth Bigley, after demanding that all female prisoners in Iraq be set free. But, if Houda Al-Azzawi can bear witness to the mistreatments inflicted at Abu Ghraib, she is also well placed to know that there are no women prisoners left there: because the last one to be released, on July 19th 2004, was she herself. A Business Woman Her personal fortune, - she would be the richest Iraqi woman after Sajida, Saddam Hussein's wife - and her stature as a 49 year old businesswoman, recently divorced, facilitate her unusual outspokenness. Today, she's back at the helm of Ishtar, a Mercedes import business. Clothes clinging to her statuesque figure, gold painted fingernails matching the jewelry on her wrists and neck, flashy makeup and a voluminous blonde hairdo: a glance suffices to understand that Ms. Azzawi is not a "typical Iraqi woman". By divulging her Abu Ghraib story without euphemisms, she is one of the rare women who dares testify in this country. Her troubles began in the fall of 2003. Denunciations, a common practice during Saddam's regime, had become a favorite national pastime again. Houda and her rich family are natural targets. Anonymous letters warn them that if they don't pay up, they'll be denounced to the Americans. Ali, her eldest son, is beaten up. Nahla, the youngest daughter, is kidnapped, then released for $10,000. Houda herself would never give in to blackmail. In her businesslike manner, she decided to take care of the problem herself. On December 22nd 2003, she went to the American base at the Adhamiya palace to protest "this unacceptable situation". "An officer listened to me politely for ten minutes. Then we were interrupted by a soldier who brought in a document. The officer read it. One second later, I wasn't 'Mrs.' anymore, but 'terrorist'." Three Marines handcuffed her hands behind her back and put a hood over her head. Several months will pass before Houda realizes that she has been accused of financing the guerilla. In December, her arrest is followed by that of her three brothers, Ali, Ayad, and Moutaz, and of her sister Nahla. At that point, not one of them is aware of any of the other's presence in the Adhamiya detention center. In the room where she stayed, handcuffed and hooded, Houda realized when she heard sobbing she recognized, that her sister Nahla was being detained next to her. A painful week followed: kicked by boots or stuck with gun butts in her breasts and her stomach, insulted, forced to stay standing or squatting for hours, sleep and food deprived, subjected to "terrifying" music that was piped in endlessly. Mistreated by a guard, Houda dislocated her shoulder. "Paradoxically, that was the best thing that happened to me. The doctor was furious with the guard and demanded that they cuff my hands in front of me, instead of behind my back, a less painful position." "My Sister's Screams" The worst was yet to come. "One evening, I heard a muffled noise and my sister's screams. The naked body of a man had been thrown across her. She was panicking. She then realized that the body didn't move. With my hands cuffed in front of me, I was able to lift a corner of my blindfold. The naked man was Ayad, my brother, and his face was covered in blood. I asked Nahla to bend her head down to check if his heart was still beating. It wasn't. She spent the night with Ayad's corpse on her knees." Her father was only able to recover the body at the morgue in April. The death certificate reads: "Ayad, male, Iraqi, Muslim, son of Hafez Ahmed Ali Al-Azzawi. Cause of death, according to the report transmitted by the coalition forces: heart arrest, cause unknown." The picture of the corpse, bought with US dollar bribes by their father, shows a young man, 32 years old, labeled # 1640, with his face deformed at the left temple and his abdomen covered in brown spots. Afterwards, she was transferred. "I arrived at Abu Ghraib on January 4, 2004. I was assigned number 156283 and a 6-foot cell. I spent 197 days in it and endured thirty interrogations. I was lucky to speak English. After three months, a prison manager asked me to be the doctor's translator. I only heard about the Abu Ghraib pictures scandal after my release. They weren't taken in our section, but we were all witness to similar or worse scenes. I saw men that had water bottles forced up their butt by soldiers. Retrospectively, I realize that after the scandal broke, our situation improved." According to Houda, "the women were relatively sheltered. You won't find a single one who will testify to having been raped. A rape, for a man, is the supreme humiliation, but for a woman, it is a death sentence by her own family." While she was in prison, Houda's husband filed for divorce. "I don't know if it is because of the scandal, but I can say that I always remained proud and that the prisoners respected me." She was finally released on July 19th, thanks to the intervention of Sheik Hicham Al-Douleïmi, who had become the inevitable negotiator for the liberation of political prisoners. As a gift, the Azzawi family gave him Houda; she became his nineteenth wife. In reality, she has recovered her status of free woman. Apart from her Mercedes business, she devotes her time to the release of her two brothers who are still incarcerated and to compel official recognition of Ayad's murder. Another project she cares about is the creation of an "Abu Ghraib Gallery", where the remnants of her stay in prison will be exhibited: the labeling armband, a soldier's T-shirt that a prisoner stole for her when her tattered clothes afforded glimpses of her bra, shirts cobbled together with pieces of cloth... "I would have liked, at the moment I was leaving my cell, to have had a profound thought or to have pronounced a meaningful sentence. I was the last woman in the prison! But my head was empty. Bizarrely, the only words that came to my mind were English: 'Bye-bye'. But, I believe I have still not completely left Abu Ghraib."
