Iraqi Prisons: New Torture Methods. Innocent, but Sentenced to Death

Iraqi Prisons: New Torture Methods. Innocent, but Sentenced to Death

by Dirk Adriaensens on 02-03-2013

BRussells Tribunal

The Iraqi Ministry of Justice has installed electronic systems that send high frequencies and ultrasound waves which affect the human central nervous system. Without a defense lawyer an officer of Tareq Al Hashemi’s security team is sentenced to death for crimes he didn’t commit, but forced to confess after severe torture.

Al Taji prisoners, 4 February 2013

New horrendous torture methods

Mrs Eman A. Khammas received an SOS message from an Iraqi prisoner and translated it into English. The Iraqi Ministry of Justice has installed new horrible torture methods, which he does not want the world to know.

I want to send an SOS call to every honourable person in the world. Today we in the Iraqi prisons are being killed in a manner unprecedented in the world, practised against us by the most horrendous organized state terrorism. After the series of assassinations, excessive torture, oppression procedures and humiliation against us and against our families, this Government practices a bloody new way to kill and torture us. It has installed electronic systems that send high frequencies and ultrasound waves which affect the human central nervous system directly and immediately, stimulate cancerous cells in the head and cause infertility in men in the long run. These systems are installed in the Al-Taji prison, the airport jail and Baghdad Central Prison (former Abu Ghraib). These prisons are intended only for sunni detainees who are accused by the Iraqi government of terrorist acts according to the controversial article 4. It should be noted that many cases have been recorded of fainting, continuous headaches and in some cases lack of clarity of eye vision and cases of hysteria and nervous and psychological tension, as a result of these waves and frequencies. Two death cases have been recorded of brain stroke: one of them was a prisoner and the other one a prison guard. Justice Minister Hassan al-Shemari claims that the installation of these systems is to confuse mobile phones in prisons. The relatives of the detainees hold the minister fully responsible for this torture, describing the case as a genocide and demand that the minister should be convicted for crimes against humanity.

Innocent, but sentenced to death

The BRussells Tribunal has received the following letter explaining the corrupt judicial system and how people are forced to confess crimes they didn’t commit after severe torture.

This is a brief of a horrendous case. There is more information and I will send it to you as soon as I can but I just want make sure that you received this one. The story starts on 18 December 2011, when vice president Al Hashemi was at Baghdad airport. My sister’s husband is an officer in his Security Military team. He has served in his team about 2 years. That day in the airport the Iraqi army had a list with names of wanted officers in Al Hashemi’s security team and his name was not in that list. After that they told him: “we need you only for a few hours, to ask you some questions” and he went with them. Since that day he disappeared and we didn’t have any information about him for 1 year. We knew that he was arrested and locked up in the secret jails of the Ministry of Interior and Intelligence department. We tried to send a lawyer to find out what exactly happened and to offer him judicial help, but they refused to let him meet my sister’s husband. They told the lawyer he has no rights because he is a terrorist according to Article 4 of the terrorism Law. Then a while ago he called my sister and told her that they tortured him frequently and that he was very sick. He arranged a date to meet the family. My mother went to the jail to see him after 14 months he had spent there. She was able to speak with him for 1 hour and a half. She was shocked when she saw him. “He looked like a dead man, a ghost, and he lost around 20 kg of weight, he even looked smaller”, she said. He showed her the signs of torture on his body. They had pulled out his fingernails and they had burned his fingers with electricity. He told her that they took him to court without a lawyer and forced him to confess that he was a terrorist and that he killed many persons. He refused to confess a crime he hadn’t committed. Then they took him back to the investigations department and tortured him again and again until he confessed to whatever crime they wanted, just to stop the horrible tortures. And without a lawyer they sentenced him to death for crimes he didn’t commit, I swear by God that this person is innocent. You know it’s a long story and I told you only the headlines. I don’t know what we should do. There are no human rights in Iraq. I don’t know how I can bring this case to the attention of the International Human rights Community. You can’t imagine how much this unlawful arrest has affected his life and my family.

This case is not an exception, but rather the rule in the new Iraq. Many innocent people have been hanged in this “blossoming democracy”.  Baghdad TV reported on 6 February 2013: “The Ministry of Justice confirmed the death of 200 prisoners since 2011 to date. The Human Right Committee in the Iraqi Parliament holds the security authorities responsible for these deaths, caused by the use of torture and the total absence of human rights for the prisoners.”

An Iraqi professor comments: “I have no idea how to help this poor guy!!! His mother and wife left Baghdad with his kid in fear they would be arrested or kidnapped. They can’t even see him before his execution (God forbid). That's why his wife's sister wrote to me. The government released a few hundreds from the prisons (many of them had been locked up without charges), and arrested tens of thousands instead. The situation in Baghdad is very critical. I think the Americans gave Maliki green light to do what he is doing. I have told you before: calling to change the constitution, calling to dissolve the criminal and corrupt structures installed by the occupation is the only way to change the dreadful situation in Iraq.”

That’s why it’s absolutely necessary for all peace loving people in the world, for all the Human Rights bodies worldwide, to support the current protest movement in Iraq, where millions of people demonstrate every single day to oust the current criminal and corrupt Iraqi rulers and to close the American Embassy. Only when that happens, the Iraqi people can regain their full sovereignty.