Gihan Shahine talks to families of Egyptian prisoners in Iraq, and listens to stories of extravagant torment The eldest of nine siblings, Mahmoud went to Iraq in 1988 in search of a better life. Today, he languishes in an Iraqi jail, run by the United States. Mahmoud was out on an errand when US bombs rained down on his apartment block during the initial attack on Iraq in 2003. His wife and two children were amongst the innocent civilians killed that day. "Mahmoud was totally shattered when he called to tell us the bad news," his brother in Cairo recounted. "He told us he was planning to flee the country and come back to Egypt." A few weeks later, however, Mahmoud's family received a letter from him informing them that he was being held by the US. He asked them to pray for his release. "He said the US forces had no charges against him," Mahmoud's brother said. Mahmoud was innocent, his brother said; "he had a clean record in Egypt and Iraq and was not part of any religious or political group." In fact, in his letters, his brother seemed hopeful that he would soon be released. But Mahmoud remains in Um Al-Qasr's Buka prison today, one of 5,500 prisoners who continue to be detained by US forces in Iraq without charges, and without clarifying the legal basis for their detention -- according to human rights watchdog group Amnesty International. International law requires that all prisoners of war, detainees and internees, must be released by the occupying powers once the occupation ends. "All prisoners held in Iraq must be released after the handover of sovereignty and any further detentions by the US-led coalition would be illegal," the group said. "Prisoners may only be re-arrested by the Iraqi authorities if there are grounds under Iraqi law, consistent with international standards to detain them." Karim Sharaf, who heads the Egyptian Foreign Ministry's delegation in Baghdad, told Al-Ahram Weekly that only 12 Egyptian detainees remain in US custody; the majority of Egyptian detainees in Iraq, he said, have been transferred to prisons under Iraqi jurisdiction. Although officials would not provide the total number of detainees, they conceded there were many. "We are working closely with the Iraqi interim government to define the legal status of Egyptian detainees," Sharaf said. "Some already face criminal charges. But many are innocent civilians, and we are looking into their cases. About 20 have already been released for having no charges against them." But the process, according to Sharaf, takes time due to the "especially difficult circumstances in Iraq. The havoc makes it difficult to move around, and we have a limited staff reviewing a huge number of files." Sharaf said dealing with Egyptian prisoners in US custody "is much more complicated due to some administrative constraints". Some observers, like Ain Shams University international law professor Hazem Atlam, suggested that the US violated the Geneva Convention by "declining to categorise the detainees in Iraq as prisoners of war, as a way to circumvent the... convention". Atlam said most prisoners, with the exception of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and a few of his Baath Party leaders, are classified as "civilian internees" who are considered "a potential threat to security". Nada Domani, spokeswoman for the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC), told the Weekly that, "the legal vacuum in which prisoners are kept should definitely end. It is the right of every prisoner to know his legal status and have legal representation. US officials said they are reviewing the files of prisoners and there is hope that the legal status of prisoners would ultimately get cleared." Domani said the committee was working on its mandate to end the legal limbo of Iraqi prisoners. With the handover of sovereignty to the Iraqis, she said, "people held by the multinational forces should either be charged or released, which is one of the important issues we raise with the detaining power." A confidential ICRC report, leaked to the press last May, said that up to 90 per cent of Iraqi detainees were actually arrested "by mistake". According to the report, a recurring pattern emerged; "arresting authorities entered houses usually after dark, breaking down doors, waking up residents roughly, yelling orders, forcing family members into one room under military guard while searching the rest of the house and further breaking doors, cabinets and other property," the report said. "Sometimes they arrested all adult males present in a house, including elderly, handicapped or sick people. Treatment often included pushing people around, insulting, taking aim with rifles, punching and kicking and striking with rifles." Atlam said the fact that "many of the detainees were not part of any military combat... is more serious because it means their captivity was illegitimate in the first place." Forty-four-year-old Ibrahim Khamis may be a case in point. Khamis was reportedly walking down the street when US forces seized him. "We suddenly received a phone call from my nephew, who was crying, telling us his father was detained at the Abu Ghraib prison," Khamis's brother Mohamed told the Weekly. A few weeks later, his family in Alexandria received a letter from Khamis via the Red Cross telling them he did not know why he was being detained; but he assured them that the occupying authorities had pressed no charges against him. "My brother has been unjustly treated," Mohamed said. "He doesn't have a criminal record in Egypt or Iraq, and is not affiliated with any political or religious group. He went to Iraq for purely financial reasons." Khamis first journeyed to Iraq in search of greener pastures 22 years ago. Technical diploma in hand, he established a workshop in Tikrit, where he also married an Iraqi woman and had four children. In a letter to his family, Mohamed said, his brother had expressed his intention to return to Egypt before the US-led strike on Iraq, but his wife insisted they should stay. A few months later, the war began, and Khamis ended up in the most notorious of all prisons: Abu Ghraib. Mohamed said the family had pursued every possible way of helping Khamis. "We talked to the media, to lawyers, and went to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs -- but the government doesn't seem to care. My mother dies every day, especially after the media disclosed the horrific abuses committed against prisoners at Abu Ghraib." The confidential ICRC report described those atrocities in detail last May, saying "prisoners were kept naked in cells, in darkness and without facilities." The media later published US soldiers' souvenir-style photographs of prisoners being forced to perform sexual acts, piled naked in a pyramid, cowering from dogs, or with electrodes attached to them. The ICRC said, "prisoners were beaten, in one case leading to death, and the ill- treatment was widely tolerated, especially with regard to extracting information from Iraqis." According to the ICRC report, abuses had been committed at a number of facilities, and not just at Abu Ghraib. Other facilities where mistreatment allegedly occurred include Al- Baghdadi air base, Hubbania camp, Tikrit holding area, the Defence Ministry and a presidential palace in Baghdad. Since March 2003, the ICRC has visited more than 12,000 prisoners of war, civilian internees and other detainees held by the Coalition Forces in Iraq to register and monitor their treatment and conditions of detention. Domani said the ICRC is pursuing their visits to US-controlled prisons; while the US claims they have adopted some corrective measures in prisons, Domani declined to comment on whether any "corrective measures" have actually been put into action. Until May 2004, the Red Cross had also facilitated the exchange of more than 23,000 messages between detainees and their families. "We just want to know where my brother is, whether he is safe and alive, and whether he will be back soon," said the brother of yet another Egyptian detainee in Iraq. His parents, he said, had not been told of their son's true predicament, because "they would die if they know their son was in prison and was subject to torture and violations."
