Abu Ghraib survivor: Taking the hood off 20 years after Iraq war
Berlin, Germany – It was snowing and the roads were empty on an early Saturday. The fear was, is it really him? Will he agree to speak?
We arrived at his apartment and were greeted by a friend who took us. He introduces himself in smart clothes. Meet Ali Shallal al-Qaysi, the man behind the hood of the torture photos from the infamous Abu Ghraib prison.
He leads me into the kitchen and whispers as we prepare for the TV interview in the next room – some of the details are too gruesome and painful to tell. I assure him, it is his story and I will listen to what he has to tell us. What follows in the next few hours is not for the faint hearted. His stories paint a gruesome picture of inhumane abuse, humiliation, torture and sadistic behaviour.
“I stood on the box. It’s so strong, not breakable. They tied wires and gave electric shocks. I remember biting my tongue, my eyes felt they were about to pop out. I started under the mask started to bleed and fell down,” says Ali.
Although his hand completely loses its function due to the torture, Ali likes to paint in his spare time. His apartment is full of cloths. One stands out: a hood, an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs with 151716 painted on them, Ali’s prisoner number. He says they wrote “Big Fish” with a marker on his forehead, a common practice of “marking” high-profile prisoners.
‘A Top Secret Place’
Without prison records, we can’t verify that he’s the man under the hood. But with testimony from two decades ago, his deformed hand that earned him the nickname “the Claw,” his photographs, court records, and interviews with former prison officials and lawyers, it’s clear that Ali was one of the victims at Abu Ghraib.
Ali spent months in prison between 2003 and 2004. At some point after his torture, he says, he lost track of time for weeks when he was left in the tents where prisoners were kept.
Abu Ghraib was feared from the time of Saddam Hussein, who built torture chambers there. After the US-led invasion in 2003, US contractors built more cells with deadbolts.
General Janis Karpinski, now demoted, was commander of Abu Ghraib prison when the abuse scandal broke. She told Al Jazeera that she was unaware of the torture between May and September 2003 when she was in charge of the prison.
“There was a central wing that served as a cafeteria. On the left were cell blocks 1A and B, 2A and B … and on the right the last building in the [air] strikes. This became a top secret place. The last cellblock was where Pappas [Colonel Thomas Pappas, who was in charge of Abu Ghraib prison’s intelligence unit] had its satellites and its men stationed. They had a direct line to [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld there. There they interrogated. Females were housed at the airport facility. Maybe there were some in Abu Ghraib,” says Karpinski.
Female ‘hostages’
Ali jumps up as he describes the screams of women on the other side of his cell block. “Women were put on the sector to our left on the second floor. We heard their screams. In the past, the guards would let a male inmate serve them food, but on one condition: he would serve them food while completely naked. We were all kept naked, by the way. We heard their screams, there was a man named Fredrik who hurt them.
Ali collapsed in sobs at this point. “We couldn’t help them, we couldn’t do anything for them. Some of us banged our heads against the wall, we don’t want this to happen over and over again. Occupation is the worst form of terrorism, crushes people’s dignity and destroys countries. It was not easy to hear these women cry. They did nothing, they were brought as hostages. When [the Americans] raiding a former government official or a nuclear scientist and failing to detain the wanted man, they brought women as hostages.
“We heard them crying and screaming what they went through. I witnessed a horrific scene – a man had raped his wife in front of him.”
Human rights groups have documented beatings, prolonged sleep and sensory depravity, and detainees held naked and tortured.
‘They were sadists’
The images – taken and released by an American soldier – shocked the world with their sheer brutality. The most explicit photos show nudity, humiliation, simulated sex acts and American security guards posing with rotting corpses. After an international outcry, 11 US soldiers were convicted, but others were reprimanded without charge.
“Abu Ghraib, Camp Bucca and other torture sites lowered the bar for compliance with the Geneva Conventions and other international obligations to treat prisoners humanely,” said Letta Tayler of Human Rights Watch.
“Ironically, one of President George W. Bush’s many weak justifications for invading Iraq was that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein would aid terrorists. Yet it was the US-led invasion that created a security vacuum and fueled the grievances that enabled the rise of al-Qaeda in Iraq, which turned into ISIS. [ISIL]leading to even more cycles of violence.
“All US presidents since George W. Bush, who started the Iraq War, have refused to prosecute any of the architects of the war crimes committed during the Iraq War. For example, not a single senior official has been prosecuted for the horrors inflicted on detainees at Abu Ghraib, only lower-level military personnel who in most cases received negligible sentences. Most civilians have never received money or other compensation for deaths, injuries or damage to property by U.S. troops, let alone apologies.”
Ali says the photos represent only a fraction of the abuse that took place after the invasion.
“Abu Ghraib prison was one of 75 other sites used as detention centers with these violations. What kind of person can do such things? Forcing people to be naked, sexually humiliated, sticking broken wooden sticks into sensitive parts until they bleed, electric shocks on genitals. I remember a man… he died before our very eyes while being tortured. They were sadists.”
When asked about the infamous dog photos, Ali replies, “I was humiliated, I was mauled by a dog here,” pointing to a bite scar on his neck. “I was naked in the cell. You know there was no bed. They wanted to harm us by putting the dog in jail.
Ali says he has dedicated his life to seeking justice from the architects of the abuse. His lawyer Andreas Schüller works for the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR).
“It is a very clear case of prison torture under US military occupation, but on the other hand you can also show the chain of command in setting up the prison system, the mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq by the US military. And this goes all the way to Donald Rumsfeld,” says Schüller.
Ali’s lawyers say German authorities should have done much more since the case was filed in 2015. ECCHR requested that the prosecution secure evidence and take testimony from survivors and experts. Schüller says German federal prosecutors have not pursued Ali’s case as before.
“There are political reasons not to do that, to go against an ally against the United States. Even 20 years after the invasion of Iraq, it is a constant topic. You saw it in 2003 with the US/UK led invasion of Iraq and now you see it with Russia in Ukraine. And as long as it is not punished, there is a risk that we will see it in other constellations,” says Schüller.
Back at Ali’s apartment, I asked, “Why did they call you the claw in Abu Ghraib?”
“This happened when they hung me on the wall. Because of the weight of my body, the handcuff pierced my hand. The wound was almost rotten,” he says.
So were the hangings and electrocutions the worst torture?
“Another form of torture was music. It’s worse than physical torture. They force you [to] lie on your stomach on the floor, all tied up. And they bring big speakers that boom with an unbearably loud sound on either side of your head. I remember the song they played called Babylon, Babylon, even when they turned off the speakers it kept ringing in my ears.
Ali’s ordeal ended when he was taken in a truck and released along with dozens of other prisoners on a highway away from Abu Ghraib. He has never been charged with a crime.
As he waits for justice, Ali refuses to let the world forget his story. He says his worst nightmare is if people don’t remember and it happens to others in another war.
While his lawyer is not hopeful that Ali will see justice in his lifetime, he is adamant to continue.
“I think even after 1,000 years our great-grandsons will receive our rights. The world is changing and people who were tortured in Vietnam and other places are getting their rights… Even those who were tortured by the Nazis or by Stalin, Hitler and others are now getting their rights,” says Ali.
