An
Iraqi Woman's Ordeal
At Abu Gharib
23 July, 2004
IslamOnline.net
The
rape ordeal she suffered at the hands of US soldiers, both males and
females, in the notorious Abu Gharib prison will continue to haunt Nadia
for the rest of her life.
Though freed now,
she is "imprisoned" in painful memories that left her psychologically
and physically scarred, paying the price of the brutality and sadism
of her American jailers.
Nadia, the name
given by a freed Iraqi female prisoner to Al-Wasat, a weekly supplement
of the respectable London-based Al-Hayat newspaper, felt it incumbent
upon herself to speak out and expose the less-talked-about abuse of
female prisoners in US-run detention camps across Iraq.
Her visit to a relative
ended up in her detention by American troops, who stormed the home under
the preferable excuse of "searching for weapons".
"I tried in
vain to convince the impeded interpreter I was a guest, but I lost consciousness
to find myself later in a dingy dark cell all by myself," Nadia
recalled.
With tears rolling
down her cheeks, she told the paper how she was stripped by her "liberators"
of the most precious thing an Arab and Muslim women can have: Her virginity.
"A thrill of
fear ran through me when I saw US soldiers laughing hysterically with
a female solider telling me mockingly in an Arabic accent I never
heard about female arms dealer in Iraq," Nadia said.
"As I tried
hard to explain to her that I was wrongly rounded up, the female soldier
started accosting and kicking me with my cries and pleas falling on
dead ears."
She went on: "She
gave me a cup of water and no sooner had I started sipping it than I
went into a deep trance to find myself later naked and raped."
Like Animals
Only then Nadia
realized that hard times and an uncertain fate were lying ahead.
And days proved
her right. The other day, five soldiers fondled and raped her one after
another in a distasteful sex orgy on the tunes of culturally offensive
heavy metal music.
"One month
later, a soldier showed up and told me in broken Arabic to take a shower.
And before finishing my bath, he kicked the door open. I slapped him
but he raped me like animals and called two of his colleagues, who forced
me to have sex with them for up to 10 times," added Nadia.
"Four months
later, the female soldier came along with four male soldiers with a
digital camera. She stripped me naked and started fondling me as if
she was a man while her male colleagues broke into laughter and started
taking photos.
"Reluctant
as I was, she fired four shots close to my head and threatened to kill
me if I resist. Then, four soldiers raped me sadistically and I lost
conscience. Later, she forced me to watch a clip of my raping, saying
bluntly: Your were born to give us pleasure."
Naida was set free
from the US hell in Abu Gharib after spending up to six months there.
The American soldiers
dumped her along the highway of Abu Gharib and gave her a meager of
10,000 dinars to "start a new life".
Too ashamed to return
home, she now works as a housemaid for an Iraqi family.
Britains mass-circulation
The Guardian revealed on May 12 that US soldiers in Iraq have sexually
humiliated and abused several Iraqi female detainees in Abu Gharib.
In its May 10-17
issue, the Newsweek said that yet-unreleased Abu Gharib abuse photos
"include an American soldier having sex with a female Iraqi detainee
and American soldiers watching Iraqis have sex with juveniles."
The Iraqi abuse
scandal exploded onto the world stage on April 29 after the CBS news
network published several shocking photos of Iraqi detainees tortured
and sexually abused by US soldiers.
In a damning report
presented to the administration in February, before the outbreak of
the scandal, US Major General Antonio Taguba found numerous "sadistic,
blatant and wanton criminal abuses" at the prison complex.