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...

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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."

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