The Truth about the Massacres of Abu Graib and Al-Taji Prisons
by The Coordination Committee for Supporting the Iraqi Intifadha on 09-08-2013
BRussells Tribunal
Until
today, no impartial and honest report about the incident has been
announced, nor about the exact number of prisoners who were able to
flee.
After one of the armed groups in Iraq had stormed the
prison (Abu Ghraib) on the evening of July 21 2013, a huge body of news,
formal and informal, came out to explain that the group implemented
twelve suicide bombings in order to demolish the outside wall of the
prison and distract guards. This was followed by clashes between prison
guards and units of the security forces on the one hand and the
attacking group on the other. After the attack many of the detainees
were smuggled and others fled.
Until today, no impartial and honest report about the
incident has been announced, nor about the exact number of prisoners who
were able to flee. Nevertheless, a member of the Security and Defense
Committee in the House of Representative said in a program on Al-Baghdadiya TV[1]
that at least 500 prisoners fled. But there is a total blackout on the
part of the government in regards the number of casualties who were
killed during the clashes between the two sides, or those who were
executed on the spot, or after the forces regained control on the
prison.
But the real number of detainees who had managed to
escape according to many sources from the government, the media or the
parliament, ranged from 500 to 3000. So far, there has not been any
complete verification of casualties, or of those who have been arrested
in the surrounding areas of the prison in the days following the
operation. There is no information too about real data regarding the
cases of those who fled, or the reason for their arrests in the first
place.
Many observers had believed that what happened in the
Taji prison on the same day is the same scenario that happened in Abu
Ghraib prison, summarized above. But the Minister of Justice Hassan
Shammari and many of the sources of the parliamentary committee of
security and defense denied completely that there was any
attack by any group on the Taji prison. Nevertheless, Prime Minister
Nuri al-Maliki said during a meeting with the leaders of the military
and security units after the Abu Graib operation that the attack on the
Taji prison had failed completely due to the fierce resistance of units
of prison guards in Taji, a prison that is located amid a special
military camp for special military troops, in charge of protecting the
city of Baghdad. But anyway, demonstrations slogans all over Iraq,
especially in the south, call Maliki a lier.
Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper said in a detailed report published on July 30th 2013[2] that the truth is very different from what has been said in many channels and media reports of local and international media. Al-Quds
investigation report stated, according to Jabbar Azzam, a lawyer
working on several cases in the prison, that what happened in Taji
prison was a bloody and heinous retaliation crime carried out by the
Iraqi security forces in revenge after the attack on the Abu Ghraib
prison, a fact that was indirectly confirmed by the Parliamentary
Security Committee when its member said that not a single prisoner who fled from Taji
prison. The report said that the prison guards and special units opened
the doors and lied to the detainees, saying that there is an attempt to
liberate them, exactly like what happened in Abu Ghraib prison. When
the detainees tried to exit outside their cells, they were surprised by
the presence of SWAT forces before them in the courtyard, who opened
fire and shoot randomly and directly at them, which led to the fall of
many, others who were injured but remained alive were re-arrest and
tortured.
The SWAT forces not only committed this brutal crime;
but they also collected the victims’ bodies in a heap and left them to
rot outside the prison for at least two days in the open and under the
sun heat. Then it proceeded to burn the bodies, in a new Iraqi Holocaust
that has been going on for ten years[3].
According to the account of eyewitness from Baghdad -a
mother of two detainees- charred bodies had been handed over later to
the department of forensic medicine in Baghdad, but they were so
deformed that it was impossible to identifying the victims. The families
of the detainees were prevented from entering the department to
identify the bodies of their loved ones for a long time. Until today
officials have not explained the reason behind burning the bodies by
SWAT and its accompanying security forces. But people believe that the
bodies had been cremated to cover up the decomposition, to hide the
traces of torture, or for both reasons.
One of the TV channels in Baghdad announced later that
there are 105 bodies in the forensic medicine office and called their
parents to go to there to receive them.
Conflicting news about the truth of what actually
happened at massacres of Abu Ghraib and Taji prisons, are still coming
out. An ex-judge in the current Iraqi Government, Muneer Haddad, said
that thousands of the detainees are innocent people, but opacity and
confusion remains the prevailing policies and behavior of the Iraqi
officials. He repeatedly called upon Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki to
step down and resign. In any case, most of the news and testimonies
narrated by eyewitnesses confirm the massacre. Iraqi Parliament Speaker
Osama Nujaifi called upon Chairman of the Supreme Court Hassan Ibrahim
Himiari to investigate the horrible torture in Iraqi prisons, and the
killing and burning of dozens of detainees.
The daily horrors of what is happening inside Iraqi
prisons such as torture, violation of human rights, and sectarian
motivated revenge and liquidations are no secrets to anyone nowadays.
Perhaps the Abu Ghraib prison is one of the most famous Iraqi prisons in
the world, in terms of the unmatched horror and gravity of crimes
committed against detainees. But Journalist and activist Haifa Zangana,
among others, has shown that Taji prison is comparable to Abu Graib, but
remains unknown to the outside world.
In an article Zangana wrote on July 26th, 2013[4]
she reviewed some of what is going on inside these prisons such as
assaults on detainees, both physically and psychologically: beatings,
depriving them of the simplest rights, insulting, and threatening of
assault on their families or relatives. In some cases guards urinate on
detainees and force them to drink urine and to clean toilets with their
beards, not to mention keeping prisoners for long hours in the scorching
summer sun, in order to force them to sign false confessions and
fabricated accusations to incriminate them with fake and malicious
charges.
All these crimes committed daily against detainees in
Iraq, while the majority of detainees are not presented to the
judiciary. Some of them do not know why they are arrested and what they
are accused of, even after spending several years in prison. Many went
on hunger strike to protest these crimes and violations. But the
authorities have given them a deaf ear.
In a televised confession of former Interior Minister
Bayan Jabr Solagh, he admitted that an Iraqi woman spent six years in
jail without trial, and the case file was completely empty except of one
document presented by the so-called secret informant who was completely
unknown.
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