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The Detainees: As U.S. Detains Iraqis, Families Plead for News
March 7, 2004
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 6 - Sabrea Kudi cannot find her son.
He was taken by American soldiers nearly nine months ago,
and there has been no trace of him since.
"I'm afraid he's dead," Ms. Kudi said.
Lara Waad cannot
find her husband. He was arrested in a raid, too.
"I had God - and I had him," she said. "Now I am alone."
In Abu Sifa, a sunbaked village north of Baghdad, entire
swaths of farmland have been cleared of males - fathers,
sons, brothers, cousins.
There are no men to do men's work. Women till the fields,
guard the houses and hoist sacks of grapefruit on their
backs.
"Essam, come here," said Malaika Hassan, to her grandson.
"Show our friends who is the new man of the house." Essam
nuzzled in her skirt. He is 10 years old.
Iraq has a new generation of missing men. But instead of
ending up in mass graves or at the bottom of the Tigris
River, as they often did during the rule of Saddam Hussein,
they are detained somewhere in American jails.
Although the insurgency has cooled, with suicide attacks
against civilians now eclipsing armed clashes with American
troops, American forces are still conducting daily raids,
bursting into homes and sweeping up families. More than
10,000 men and boys are in custody. According to a detainee
database maintained by the military, the oldest prisoner is
75, the youngest 11.
Military officials say some of the detainees have been
accused of serious offenses, including shooting down
helicopters and planting roadside bombs.
But the officials acknowledge that most of the people
captured are probably not dangerous. Of a recent batch of
cases reviewed by military judges, they recommended that
963 of 1,166 detainees be released.
Part of the reason so many are being held is that soldiers'
work is not police work. Tips are not as reliable.
Artillerymen are not detectives. The troops cast a wide net
and then sort through the catch, with much of the
investigation coming after the arrest, not before.
"But we have to be careful about it," said Brig. Gen. Mark
Kimmitt, the deputy director of operations for the
occupying military forces. "We don't want to arrest an
entire village and come out with one rifle."
"There is an old Arabic expression," he added. "Don't do a
good deed and then throw it in the river."
The detainee issue is increasingly contentious. Under
international law, the American authorities have the right
as occupiers to detain anyone who poses a security threat,
even without enough evidence to prosecute. But in Iraq,
unlike in postwar Japan or Germany, occupation has come
without pacification. The security threat did not end May
1, when major combat was declared over, and detentions have
continued long after Iraqi troops were routed.
But the occupation is scheduled to end June 30, when the
American authorities plan to hand sovereignty back to the
Iraqi people. American officials say it is unclear how that
will affect the status of detainees.
The American authorities say they are trying to help people
locate detained relatives, even posting prisoner lists on
the Internet.
But computers are strange things to most Iraqis, and many
families still have no idea where their men are. Often they
were led away in the middle of the night, with bags over
their heads and no explanation. Many people have said that
when they asked soldiers where their family members were
being taken, they were told to shut up. A few hundred women
have also been detained. And complicating the families'
searches, there are several major prisons and hundreds of
smaller jails and bases across Iraq.
"It took the Americans five minutes to take my son," said
Fadil Abdulhamid. "It has taken me more than three weeks to
find him."
Adil Allami, a lawyer with the Human Rights Organization of
Iraq, said security detainees had essentially no rights.
None have lawyers, and most are denied visits.
"Iraq has turned into one big Guantánamo," Mr. Allami said,
referring to the United States military prison in Cuba
where hundreds of terrorism suspects are being held, mostly
without charges.
Several men recently released from American jails in Iraq
have said they were kicked in the head, choked and put in
cold, wet rooms for days at a time. The American
authorities declined to comment on the charges, pending the
outcome of an investigation. Last month, they suspended 17
enlisted men and officers, including a battalion commander
and a company commander, after abuse allegations surfaced
at Abu Ghraib prison, where thousands of prisoners are
being held.
The prison, west of Baghdad, is a nucleus of despair. Every
day, crowds of women in black shrouds jam the front gates,
squinting up at the guard towers, clutching worn pieces of
paper, pleading with guards to see their missing men.
"Move! Move! Move!" an American sergeant shouted at them on
a recent day.
Ms. Kudi, whose son, Muhammad, was detained nearly nine
months ago, has been to Abu Ghraib more than 20 times. The
huge prison is the center of her continuing odyssey through
military bases, jails, assistance centers, hospitals and
morgues. She said she had been shoved by soldiers and
chased by dogs.
"If they want to kill me, kill me," Ms. Kudi said. "Just
give me my son."
Ms. Kudi is a compact woman with tribal marks and the sorry
story of modern Iraq tattooed on her face. She says she is
around 50 years old. She looks much older.
Her first son died in the Iran-Iraq war, her second in
Kuwait in 1991, her third during the American invasion last
year. Two more boys have been crippled in battle. Her
husband is dead.
On June 23, she said Muhammad, a 32-year-old furniture
maker, was waiting in his truck at an American checkpoint
in Ramadi when a gun battle broke out. Witnesses said
Muhammad was lightly wounded in the cross-fire and then
detained by American forces.
Three days later, American troops returned Muhammad's
truck. But they did not know what had happened to Muhammad.
The other day, as she had done before, Ms. Kudi went to an
assistance center in Baghdad to check the computer database
of prisoners. Again, she stepped into a little office and
sat down in a little chair. Again, she watched a woman
behind a desk key in her son's name. Again, she was told
there was no record.
A line of people waited behind her. Many got the same empty
news.
The reasons for the detentions differ. The military
authorities say they arrested Ms. Waad's husband because he
may have played a part in shooting down a Chinook
helicopter last year. Ms. Waad said that he was a taxi
driver and that it was a case of mistaken identity.
Mr. Abdulhamid, who has been looking for his son for three
weeks, said his son was arrested because he was at a
wedding where guns were shot off in celebration. It is a
common story.
In Abu Sifa, the farming village north of Baghdad, 83
people were detained in December during a raid for a
high-level former member of Mr. Hussein's Baath Party. But
people in Abu Sifa say everyone here was a Baathist.
"Even the dogs were Baathists," said Munther Haddam, a
farmer. "What's the big deal?"
Ms. Hassan, who lives with her 10-year-old grandson, said
American soldiers took her four adult sons. "Couldn't they
have left me one?" she asked.
Most of the village teachers were led away, too.
Saba
Muhammad, an Abu Sifa elder, began to count them on his
hands: Salah, Faisal, Ahmed, Ayub, Emad, Raad.
Soon he ran out of fingers.
"Eleven," Mr. Muhammad said.
"Eleven teachers. Now you tell me how we're supposed to
feel about Americans."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
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