'Man In The Hood' Tells Of His Tale In Abu Ghraib

[brooklynite]

Please read the full article...four paragraphs don't capture this:

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 6 (Bernama) -- Ali Shalah, popularly known as 'the man in the hood' in a famous photograph depicting the torture suffered by Iraqis at the American-run Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, today spilled the beans on the inhumane treatment he received at the detention centre.

Ali, who now heads an organisation representing tortured victims in Iraq, captivated some 2,000 people with his story at the three-day War Crimes Conference at the Putra World Trade Centre, organised by the Perdana Global Peace Organisation headed by former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

...snip...

...Soon after this, the former lecturer said he was forcefully placed on top of a carton box containing canned food, had wires connected to his fingers and ordered to stretch his hand out horizontally, and the electricity was switched on.

"As the electric current entered my whole body, I felt as if my eyes were being forced out and sparks were flying out. My teeth were clattering violently and my legs shaking violently as well. My whole body was shaking. I was electrocuted on three separate sessions," he said to pin-drop silence in the hall.

...snip...

"I was released in the beginning of March, 2004. I was put into a truck and taken to a highway and then thrown out. A passing car stopped and took me home," he ended his tale.

http://www.bernama.com.my/bernama/v3/news.php?id=245382

[nam78_two]

1. K&R.nt

[meldroc]

2. K&R++

[Bandit]

3. USA USA USA "We Don't Care" "We Don't Care" "We Don't Care"

Ain't we just the greatest though? :shrug: Real words escape me

[KansDem]

4. Remember, as you read this, keep repeating over and over to yourself...

"Just frat boys blowing off a little steam...Just frat boys blowing off a little steam..."

Over, and over...and over...

[tanyev]

5. Hey, wasn't the original "official" story that they had just put him up there

for the photo, to make him think that they were going to electrocute him? That they didn't actually shock him? Off to google...

[TroglodyteScholar]

6. That's the story I seem to remember... n/t

[Mandate My Ass]

7. that's how I remember it too

just like the nonconsensual sex and rape was only "simulated" :eyes:

[Jacobin]

8. Yep. You remembered right

It was like "oh, yeah, it was bad to do that putting a hood thing on him and hooking him up so he would THINK he was going to be zapped, but it was just all in good fun gone a little too far, and you don't REALLY think they actually turned the juice on, do you? Cause they didn't. No. Of course not."

Gawd I hate this idiotic war.

[tanyev]

9. From Sabrina Harman's trial:

Wired Iraqi Prisoner Photo Done In Jest: Lawyer
Reuters

Thursday 12 May 2005

Fort Hood, Texas - A U.S. Army reservist accused of attaching wires to a hooded Iraqi prisoner did so in a joke shared with the prisoner, her lawyer said at the start of a court-martial on Thursday.

Spc. Sabrina Harman, who pleaded innocent to charges of conspiracy, dereliction of duty and maltreatment of subordinates, also photographed abuses because she wanted to document what she felt was wrongful behavior, attorney Frank Spinner said.

She appears in a photo near naked Iraqi prisoners and is charged with photographing as they were forced to masturbate. She is also charged with placing wires on a detainee dubbed Gilligan and telling him he would be electrocuted if he stepped off a box in a picture seen worldwide.

"This was a joke. Gilligan understood it to be a joke. It was all part of their relationship," Spinner said. "It was a relationship beyond what the pictures showed."

http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/37/11082

[Morgana LaFey]

10. Please post link if you're able to find it. Thanks! nt

[tanyev]

11. See post 9 from Harman's trial.

Also Walter Pincus column, June 2004.

Reports from Iraq and Afghanistan indicate that detainees have been told to stand at attention for long periods or sit in "stress positions." In one of the photographs from Abu Ghraib, a hooded detainee is shown being forced to stand on a box with wires attached to his body. He was told he would get an electric shock if he moved. Seven military police soldiers have been charged in connection with the abuse shown in that and other photographs. Investigations continue into the role military interrogators played in those incidents.

In such situations, the manual said, the source of pain "is not the interrogator but the victim himself." And while the subject remains in that uncomfortable or painful position, he must be made to think that his captor could do something worse to him, creating in him the stress and anxiety the interrogator seeks.

Threats of death, however, were described as "worse than useless" because they can leave the prisoner thinking "that he is as likely to be condemned after compliance as before."

http://www.christusrex.org/www1/icons/wpost-6-13-04d.html