-Caveat Lector- Detentions http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,928469,00.html
Freed journalists tell of eight-day Iraqi prison ordeal Tortures and beatings heard by four released from notorious jail after pleas for help to Vatican and Arafat Peter Beaumont in Amman Thursday April 3, 2003 The Guardian A group of western journalists held in a notorious Baghdad prison on suspicion of spying described yesterday how other prisoners were tortured and beaten in the corridors outside their cells. Matthew McAllester, a Briton employed by the US newspaper Newsday, described the terror of his eight days in Abu Ghraib prison just outside Baghdad, one of the biggest prison complexes in the Arab world. "There were beatings and torture going on outside our cells, in the corridor," McAllester said immediately after his release. He described hearing the screams of other prisoners being tortured and saw some with eyes and faces bloodied and swollen. "Other inmates hobbled around, apparently because the soles of their feet had been burned or otherwise injured. We thought we were going to be killed at any moment," McAllester said. McAllester, 33, and Moises Saman, 29, a photographer for Newsday, were picked up by Iraqi secret service agents nine days ago, with Molly Bingham, 34, a freelance US photographer, and Johan Rydeng Spanner, a Danish freelance photographer. McAllester and Saman were handcuffed and taken downstairs from their hotel room in the service elevator, and transported to Abu Ghraib prison just outside Baghdad. "We could hear screams, especially during the night," McAllester said yesterday. "The Iraqi prisoners were occupying the cells opposite us. We would hear them being taken to and from a session. "But I could hear them being beaten just yards away from where we were trying to sleep. It sounded as though some kind of implement was being used." At one stage, one of the Iraqis was in such pain after his "session" that a doctor was brought to see him. Bingham, who entered Iraq on a tourist visa a day before the US-led war began, described being approached in her hotel room by members of the special police, who asked to search all her equipment, before armed officers led her away at just after 4am. For McAllester and Saman the ordeal began about 1.30am on March 24. McAllester was about to file a story, and Saman was near the top of the Palestine hotel taking photographs as US warplanes bombed the capital. When he came back down to the room the two Newsday staffers were sharing, two Iraqi intelligence agents were sitting on one of the beds. The men were handcuffed and told they were being taken to Syria. Instead, they were taken to the jail. After being stripped and handed prison py jamas, they were given blankets and led to bare concrete cells where they were held during their interrogations. They were blindfolded at different periods. Bingham endured one interrogation blindfolded for the entire interview. McAllester said the authorities wanted him to sign a statement in Arabic, which he refused to do. Instead, he wrote one out in English saying in part that "I was not sent here by the CIA or the Pentagon and I'm not from any mission". "I was accused of being dishonest and the inter rogators implied my future depended on my becoming honest," McAllester said. The authorities wanted him to "come up with more information spontaneously without being asked". Although the journalists say they were not badly treated, McAllester re calls his guards joking to him: "We kill people." The release of the journalists, and a peace activist who had been held with them, came after frantic efforts by Newsday editors and prominent international figures and journalist advocacy groups. Newsday editors had contacted everyone from the Vatican to Iraq's ambassador to the UN and diplomats in the region and, through an intermediary, the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, whose intervention is understood to have been crucial in securing the release. McAllester added a note of caution: "We are free because we had the support of such a great network of people. There are Iraqis still in that prison who do not have that support." Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003 Forwarded for your information. The text and intent of the article have to stand on their own merits. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. 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