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Iraqi female detainees say that they have been illegally
detained, raped and sexually humiliated by U.S. occupation forces.
One female detainee, who identified herself as “Noor”, said that U.S.
soldiers at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib raped women and, in many occasions, forced
them to strip naked in public. She also said that many female detainees got
pregnant.
The classified investigation launched by the U.S. army, led by Major General
Antonio Taguba, confirmed Noor’s account and said that U.S. guards sexually
abused female detainees at Abu Ghraib.
According to Taguba’s report, the 1,800 abuse photographs shot by U.S.
guards inside Abu Ghraib included images of naked male and female prisoners,
a male Military Police guard “having sex” with a female detainee, and naked
male and female detainees forcibly arranged in various sexually explicit
positions for photographing.
The Bush administration, which insists that these were the acts of a few
soldiers, blocked the release of photographs of Iraqi women detainees at Abu
Ghraib, including those of women forced to bare their breasts, although
these have been shown to Congress.
However, Taguba’s fifty-three-page report, found that between October and
December of 2003 there were numerous instances of “sadistic, blatant, and
wanton criminal abuses” at Abu Ghraib”.
Also, a British MP, Ann Clwyd, confirmed a report that an Iraqi woman in her
70s had been harnessed and ridden like a donkey at Abu Ghraib after being
captured last July. Clwyd said: “She was held for about six weeks without
charge. During that time she was insulted and told she was a donkey.”
Moreover, the Italian reporter, Giuliana Sgrena, who was held hostage in
Iraq, reported that in one incident, U.S. occupation forces raided the home
of Mithal al Hassan, and arrested both her husband and son.
“The soldiers later ransacked the apartment. Denounced as part of a
vendetta, Mithal was condemned without trial to eighty days of horror in the
company of other women prisoners who, like her, were subjected to abuse and
torture. She has since spotted her tormentors on the internet.”
Other reports state the U.S. forces violate international laws by kidnapping
Iraqi women to use them as a bargaining chip to persuade their male
relatives to surrender.
Iman Khamas, chief of the International Occupation Watch Center, a
nongovernmental organization that gathers information on human rights abuses
under occupation, said that “one former detainee had recounted the alleged
rape of her cell mate in Abu Ghraib.”
According to Khamas, the detainee said that “She had been raped 17 times in
one day”.
Attorney Amal Kadham Swadi, one of seven female lawyers representing women
detainees at Abu Ghraib, says that abuse and torture against Iraqi women is
not confined only to Abu Ghraib, but is “happening all across Iraq.”
“Sexualized violence and abuse committed by U.S. troops goes far beyond a
few isolated cases,” she said.
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Source:
Al-Jazeera
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