Iraqi tells of jail brutality
2005-01-11 20:04
Fort Hood, Texas - An Abu Ghraib detainee on Tuesday described brutal beatings at the hands of military policeman Charles Graner, who he said insulted his Muslim faith and laughed as he hit and humiliated him.
"Graner is a man who represents the people that are sick-minded," said Ameen Al-Sheikh, a Syrian who admitted he had fought US forces in Iraq.
His deposition, videotaped last month in Iraq, was presented on Tuesday at the court martial of Graner, accused of instigating the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuses that stirred worldwide outrage.
In questioning him, the defence evidently sought to boost its case that harsh treatment of prisoners was ordered by senior officers in order to gain crucial intelligence on anti-US activity in Iraq.
But his deposition appeared to boost the case of the government, which is seeking to portray Graner, 36, as a ruthless thug who abused prisoners for fun.
The prisoner said Graner and other military policemen, rather than interrogators from military intelligence, were the ones who conducted most of the beatings.
Torture 'expert'
"Graner and those torturers were the ones doing the torture. They were the experts," Sheikh said.
The Syrian was involved in a gun battle with US soldiers at the prison in October 2003, after an Iraqi guard gave him a gun. He was shot in the chest and legs.
He said that when he was taken back to his cell, Graner jumped on his wounded leg and hit his wounds with a metal baton.
Asked if it hurt, he said: "You cannot imagine. I cried," Sheikh said.
He claimed that in another incident, Graner made him eat pork, which Muslims consider unclean meat.
"He also made me drink alcohol, and made me say things against my religion."
Sheikh, who alternated between speaking in English and in Arabic, said a Yemeni detainee told him how Graner had made him "eat from the toilet."
'He was laughing'
Asked whether Graner appeared to be enjoying the abuses, Sheikh said: "He was laughing, he was whistling, he was singing."
"That Graner is a man who really hurt his country, his people," he said.
Graner has pleaded not guilty to the five charges, which include maltreatment of prisoners and assault, and which carry a maximum sentence of 17 and a half years' imprisonment.
Witnesses on Monday described how Graner forced prisoners to take off their clothes and masturbate, and piled naked detainees on top of each other.
The trial comes amid allegations that prisoner abuses also occurred elsewhere in Iraq, as well as in Afghanistan and at the detention centre at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.