Raped in Iraq and Left to Die

On the SAME DAY that Bush makes a campaign speech proclaiming that conditions are better than ever for women because of the U.S. invasion. ON THE SAME DAY, in the PRO-WAR WALL STREET JOURNAL.

Ms. Nuami, who heads the department of Palestinian studies at Baghdad University, was consulted frequently by United Nations officials looking to expand women’s involvement in post-Hussein Iraq. In January, Amnesty International commissioned her to prepare a broad report on violence committed against Iraqi women.

Women have told her they were beaten, sworn at and forced into cold showers by jailers attempting to extract intelligence, she says. When asked whether they were raped, none have said they were. A few, however, began to sob when pressed with the question, prompting Ms. Nuami to wonder whether they had been but feared retribution for admitting it. She has learned of women so ashamed upon release that they committed suicide, or were abandoned by their husbands; a few women seemed to have disappeared after returning home, Ms. Nuami says.

Finding No Solace

Fear of Further Suffering Silences
Female Ex-Detainees in Iraq

By FARNAZ FASSIHI
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
July 14, 2004; Page A13

BAGHDAD, Iraq — For Iraqi men abused by Americans in Abu Ghraib and other U.S. detention centers here, release often means an end to their trauma and an opportunity to heal, perhaps even to seek legal redress. For women who endured the same fate, though, their ordeal often worsens upon return to society — and in many cases never ends.

While these men are treated as heroes who defied the occupiers, Iraq’s conservative, patriarchal society manifests a shame at the women’s treatment by isolating, ostracizing or perhaps killing these daughters, sisters and wives. Women — whose dishonor at the hands of outsiders, even a mere arrest, is considered a disgrace to the entire tribe — are forced by society to suffer silently regarding their experience in detention, their lives threatened if they speak the truth.

What’s more, this same dynamic has thwarted attempts to learn the extent of their mistreatment, despite evidence of rapes and other physical abuse similar to what the world learned occurred in men’s prisons. Even other Iraqi women working to sort fact from rumor have been unable to pierce the veil of shame and silence.

“When men leave Abu Ghraib, they are welcomed into their families with open arms, but for women, it is the beginning of the end,” says Huda al-Nuami, a 43-year-old Iraqi political-science professor who has spent the past year trying to persuade these women to open up and tell her the truth. Ms. Nuami worries that some have been hidden away by their humiliated families — and in some cases perhaps killed by them.

Women make up a tiny fraction of Iraqis detained by U.S. forces. The American military says it has registered 92 females of the 22,000 people held in the three main detention facilities: Abu Ghraib, Camp Cropper at Baghdad airport and Camp Bucca in Basra. The number doesn’t include dozens — perhaps hundreds — more women held at 14 smaller temporary detention centers across Iraq, according to military estimates.

Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a spokesman for the detention operations in Iraq, says the U.S. doesn’t record names or numbers of Iraqis at temporary facilities. He said all detained women were arrested because they were suspected of being a security threat, but so far none have been charged with offenses against occupation troops.

The military’s first major investigation of prisoner mistreatment, prepared in February by Major Gen. Antonio Taguba, cited at least one case of a military-police guard “having sex with” a female detainee. Photos used to compile the report, shown to Congress as evidence of abuse in Abu Ghraib, depict women forced to strip naked or bare their breasts, according to media accounts by people who have seen them. But no women have come forward.

Ms. Nuami, who heads the department of Palestinian studies at Baghdad University, was consulted frequently by United Nations officials looking to expand women’s involvement in post-Hussein Iraq. In January, Amnesty International commissioned her to prepare a broad report on violence committed against Iraqi women.

Women have told her they were beaten, sworn at and forced into cold showers by jailers attempting to extract intelligence, she says. When asked whether they were raped, none have said they were. A few, however, began to sob when pressed with the question, prompting Ms. Nuami to wonder whether they had been but feared retribution for admitting it. She has learned of women so ashamed upon release that they committed suicide, or were abandoned by their husbands; a few women seemed to have disappeared after returning home, Ms. Nuami says.

Ms. Nuami wasn’t allowed to interview women while they were in detention. But she discovered that seven female Iraqi lawyers had formed a committee to represent women detainees and were allowed to visit them. Amal Swadi, with whom Ms. Nuami has worked most closely, says a woman at the al-Kharkh prison in Baghdad told her American soldiers raped her during a raid at her house, stole her money and gold and then arrested her. She showed the lawyers cuts and bruises on her arms.

The lawyers prepared a written report about the condition of female detainees and gave it to the minister of human rights at the time, Abdel Basset Turki, who resigned in April. Mr. Turki said he met with L. Paul Bremer, then the American administrator of Iraq, in December and told him of mistreatment of women and the poor conditions of their confinement. He said Mr. Bremer listened and promised things would improve soon.

Later that month, Mr. Turki met with a senior U.S. State Department official, Arthur E. “Gene” Dewey, head of the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, and complained about the detainees’ treatment, highlighting the women’s situation. He said that during the meeting two of the official’s aides took notes and that Mr. Dewey promised to relay the message to his superiors in Washington. A State Department official confirmed the detainee issue was raised at that meeting, as well as issues related to human rights and migration.

Iraqi men released from detention by U.S. forces can expect a warm welcome from relatives, as occurred here on the outskirts of Baghdad, but female detainees often are greeted with opprobrium.

Ms. Nuami and the lawyers also began appealing to influential Sunni and Shiite religious figures and local clerics, visiting mosques and explaining their findings of abuse at the hands of family patriarchs once women were freed. They asked the clerics to intervene and to denounce killing or harming women after their release.

The Association of Muslim Clerics, a committee of senior Sunni clerics from the Umm al-Qurra mosque, says men seeking permission to kill their wives or daughters after their release from detention have approached some members. The association forbid them and issued written orders, and instructed their affiliated clerics throughout Iraq to discourage men from harming females after their release.

“Islamic law forbids killing of an innocent soul,” says Sheikh Mohammed Bashir al-Faydi, spokesman for the association. “The woman has already suffered enough from one injustice, so why should we impose on her another kind of punishment?”

Ms. Nuami has experienced first-hand the stain that attaches to a woman who has a run-in with the American occupiers. Last fall, she and two male relatives were stopped at a U.S. checkpoint. As soldiers ordered them out of the car to search it, she blurted out, “Yankee, go home.”

She says the soldier pointed his gun at her, grabbed his crotch and made a lewd suggestion. Ms. Nuami says she shook with outrage, but found herself just as infuriated at her own family members, who shoved her in the car and yelled at her all the way home for bringing shame and dishonor upon the family. Later, she says, her own 20-year-old daughter told her, “I don’t want the stigma of a mother who was mistreated by the U.S.”

PROLONGED AGONY

Cultural pressures are making it difficult to learn the extent of abuse suffered by Iraqi women detained by U.S. troops, despite evidence of their mistreatment.

 
• Gen. Antonio Taguba’s report cites jailers ”videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees” and a ”guard having sex with a female detainee.” He says his findings are ”amply supported by written confessions provided by several of the suspects, written statements provided by detainees, and witness statements.”
 
• Staff Sgt. Reuben Layton told army investigators that Spc. Charles Graner occasionally downloaded photos onto his computer. He says he saw pictures of what he believed to be a female detainee exposing her breasts.
 
• Sgt. Matthew Smith told army investigators he has a picture of ”the nude Iraqi female” on a CD.
 
• Pfc. Lynndie England told army investigators she had seen a photo of a female detainee exposing her breasts, but doesn’t know who took it.
 
• Capt. Donald Reese, warden at Abu Ghraib, told army investigators Lt. Col. Steven Jordan once investigated, and ruled unfounded, an incident involving ”a female detainee in the nude being interrogated in a closed room.”