Rape
Cases Emerge From The Shadows
By Dahr Jamail &
Ali al-Fadhily
03 March, 2007
Inter
Press Service
BAGHDAD, Mar 1 (IPS) - Reports of the gang-rape of
20-year-old Sabrine al-Janabi by three policemen has set off new demands
for justice from Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government.
Janabi, who lives in the
Hai al-Amil area of southern Baghdad with her husband, was taken from
her home Feb. 18 to a police station and accused of assisting resistance
fighters.
Janabi told al-Jazeera channel
Feb. 19 that three police commandos raped her in the police garrison
after accusing her of cooking for resistance fighters.
"One of them put his
hand on my mouth so no one outside the room could hear me," she
said in a videotaped statement. "I told them 'I did not know that
an Iraqi could do this to another Iraqi'."
She said "I begged them
not to rape me and I swore to them that I was a good woman and I am
like a sister to them, but they did it one after the other."
Nouri al-Maliki's office
issued a statement that medical evidence showed Janabi had not been
raped. That statement has turned the event into a political crisis.
Janabi is Sunni, and the
police predominantly Shia. Sunnis have long accused the police of using
heavy-handed tactics against Sunnis during "security operations."
But this incident appears to be highlighting widespread displeasure
with the Iraqi government at least as much as stoking strained sectarian
tensions.
Maliki's office described
Janabi as "a liar" and recommended that the three accused
policeman be commended, in response to demands for an independent investigation
from both Shia and Sunni opposition groups.
The New York Times reported
that an Iraqi nurse who says she treated Janabi saw signs of sexual
and physical assault.
Stories of rape committed
by both U.S. and Iraqi soldiers have appeared since the early days of
the U.S. occupation of Iraq. The first stories emerged from inside Abu
Ghraib prison. These, along with photographic evidence of sexual humiliation,
provoked widespread anger across Iraq.
Rape victims in Iraq rarely
come forward because they fear public scorn and humiliation. A Muslim
woman who acknowledges being raped risks death at the hands of male
relatives seeking to restore family honour.
Dr. Harith al-Dhari, secretary-general
of the Sunni religious group The Association of Muslim Scholars, told
reporters this week that rapes take place often, but victims are not
coming forward to file complaints.
But since Janabi went public
with her story, other stories of rape have begun to emerge.
On Feb. 22 a 50-year-old
Sunni woman accused four Iraqi soldiers of raping her and attempting
to rape her two daughters. She took her story to minister Izzidin Dola,
who then brought the mayor of her city and a group of tribal chiefs
to her home in order to take her statement.
"At least four police
officers participated in that crime and they are facing legal procedures,"
Dola told IPS.
"The Iraqi police are
following the example of those who trained them," Ahmed Mukhtar,
a school headmaster in the northern Iraqi city Mosul told IPS. "American
soldiers did it more than a thousand times and got away with it. They
sentenced that soldier who killed Abeer after raping her with a hundred
years imprisonment, but we Iraqis are not fools, and we know he will
be on parole sooner than he hopes."
Mukhtar was referring to
the gang rape of 14-year-old Abeer al-Janabi last year near Mahmudiya
south of Baghdad. Janabi was then killed together with her parents and
younger sister. Soldiers then burnt the bodies in an attempt to cover
their crime.
Sgt. Paul E. Cortez, 24,
was sentenced Feb. 23 to 100 years in prison, but is eligible for parole
in 10 years. Cortez pleaded guilty to the rape and killing.
Iraqi resistance groups have
issued statements declaring that the Iraqi police and soldiers involved
in recent rapes would be given "proper punishment."
(Ali al-Fadhily is our Baghdad
correspondent. Dahr Jamail is our specialist writer who spent eight
months reporting from inside Iraq, and has been covering the Middle
East for several years)