isen.blog

Riverbendblog, in a March 29 entry, tells of meeting a 19 year old girl who was thrown in Abu Ghraib because

a certain neighbor had made the false accusation against her family. The neighbor's 20-year-old son was still bitter over a fight he had several years ago with one of [the girl's] brothers. All he had to do was contact a certain translator who worked for the troops and give [the fqamily's] address. It was that easy.

The boys in the family were taken away and the girl and her mother

were taken to the airport for interrogation. [The girl] remembers being in a room, with a bag over her head and bright lights above. She claimed she could see the shapes of figures through the little holes in the bag. She was made to sit on her knees, in the interrogation room while her mother was kicked and beaten to the ground . . . she said, "I heard my mother begging them to please let me go and not hurt me… she told them she'd do anything- say anything- if they just let me go."

Then the girl and and her mother were taken to Abu Ghraib.

In Abu Ghraib, they were seperated and [the girl] suspected that her mother was taken to another prison outside of Baghdad. A couple of terrible months later - after witnessing several beatings and the rape of a male prisoner by one of the jailors - [the girl] was suddenly set free . . . By the end of her tale, [the girl] was crying silently . . . she shook her head and waved away my words of sympathy, "It's ok- really- I'm one of the lucky ones... all they did was beat me."

As of the writing, the girl did not know where her mother and three of her brothers were.

If this story is true, the recent Abu Ghraib horror recounted in The New Yorker 5/4/04 is not "an isolated incident," as the U.S. Army has been instructed to tell the Iraqis.