Abu Ghraib prisoners ‘abused on arrival’

MOST of the detainees abused at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad have told US investigators that they were stripped and humiliated on arrival.

They said they were beaten and threatened with death and sexual assault if they did not co-operate with US interrogators.

Kasim Mehaddi Hilas said he was hooded and forced to wear rose-coloured women’s underwear.

“Most of the days I was wearing nothing else,” he said in his statement.

He also said he saw an Army translator having sex with a boy, aged between 15 and 18, at the prison.

He claimed that a female soldier took pictures of the assault. “The kid was hurting very bad,” he said.

Mr Hilas, who said some soldiers did not wear name badges or uniforms, was at one point handcuffed to the bars of a cell without his feet touching the ground.

He also told investigators how he saw a prisoner being sexually abused with a phosphoric light.

Mustafa Jassim Mustafa, also said that he witnessed this incident. He added that the detainee assaulted “was screaming for help”.

Another inmate said he too was pinned down and a phosphoric light was broken across him. “I was glowing and they were laughing,” he added. He was later sexually assaulted with a baton.

Mohanded Juma Juma claimed that he and his father were both stripped.

He said food was often thrown into toilets from where prisoners were ordered to retrieve it.

Another detainee told how they were forced to crawl on the floor while prison guards rode them like animals.

One of the first images of the scandal was that of a hooded detainee standing on a box attached to wires, fearing that he would be electrocuted if he fell.

Abdou Hussain Saad Faleh said it was he was the man subjected to this.

A “tall black soldier came and put electrical wires on my fingers and toes and on my penis, and I had a bag over my head”, he said.

He said he was taunted about his religion by soldiers, one of whom threatened to rape his wife.

But the soldiers told him that if he co-operated with interrogators they would release him for Ramadan.

The abuse scandal has already prompted worldwide shock, anger in the Arab world and has undermined the coalition effort in Iraq.