http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/23/hussam-mohammed-amin-form_n_243818.htmlHussam Mohammed Amin: Former Iraqi Weapons Monitor Describes U.S. Abuse For First Time
Michael Bronner | Huffington Post Investigative Fund
First Posted: 07-23-09 03:25 PM | Updated: 07-23-09 06:49 PM
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Camp Nama was run by a secretive U.S. Joint Special Operations task force, and was off-limits even to most military personnel. Those who did have access retained operational anonymity -- few knew even each other by their real names. The CIA would eventually become worried enough about being associated with what went on there that it barred employees from setting foot inside.
His senses swimming in the suffocating blackout bag, Amin couldn't anticipate where the next blow was coming from, he said -- or whether it would be a punch, a kick or a whack with "some kind of special metal stick" as unseen interrogators demanded the location of nonexistent weapons. He lost track of time, unsure whether he'd been there hours or days. At some point amid the fusillade, he was told that he would be executed. He believed it. He felt blood running down his face and neck -- three jagged gashes across his forehead that would require stitches. "Every day, I thought, 'Now, I will die,'" he said -- which was precisely the point: He was in "Purgatory," the task force's nickname for the initial interrogation/disorientation ordeal.
At some point his captors briefly removed the bag. He was ordered to lie on his side and keep his eyes fixed to the wall inches from his face. It hurt to breathe. He tucked his head in and snuck a glance at his chest: It was black with bruises. Each time he nodded off, one of his minders would kick him or hit him with the stick. "Even when you are sleeping, they beat you," he told me, shaking his head slowly. "You wake by punching."
For Amin, Purgatory would last five days, he said, after which he was packed off to Camp Cropper, a large prison near Baghdad Airport holding thousands of detainees, and logged into a solitary cell.
Some details of Amin's account could not be directly confirmed, but they are consistent with later news reports and recent interviews about widespread abuses of prisoners at Camp Nama in the early months of the war. What occurred at the secret prison represents something of an overlooked angle to the ongoing torture debate, which has focused on the more exotic CIA techniques, like waterboarding, used on al-Qaeda prisoners. In Iraq, it is those captured by the U.S. special operations teams who allege the most severe treatment.
"That was standard procedure when they were grabbed by special forces," said Rod Barton, an Australian bioweapons expert who was one of the senior advisors to the CIA from the Iraq Survey Group, the team sent by the invasion force to hunt for WMD after the invasion. "Purgatory was official policy, not the result of a few undisciplined soldiers, and in that regard it was most disturbing...What the special forces were doing was physical. They were hitting people -- at least. This goes beyond psychological torture."
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