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Women Prisoners Abused
In December 2003, a woman prisoner inside Abu Ghraib managed to smuggle out a note. The note claimed that U.S. guards had been raping women detainees and that several of the women were now pregnant. It added that the women had been forced to strip naked in front of men. Astonishingly, the secret inquiry launched by the U.S. military in January, headed by Major General Antonio Taguba, has confirmed that the letter smuggled out of Abu Ghraib by a woman known only as "Noor" was entirely and devastatingly accurate. While most of the focus since the scandal broke three weeks ago has been on the abuse of men, and on their sexual humiliation in front of U.S. women soldiers, there is now incontrovertible proof that women detainees--who form a small but unknown proportion of the 40,000 people in U.S. custody since last year's invasion--have also been abused. Nobody appears to know how many. But among the 1,800 digital photographs taken by U.S. guards inside Abu Ghraib there are, according to Taguba's report, images of a U.S. military policeman "having sex" with an Iraqi woman. Taguba discovered that guards have also videotaped and photographed naked female detainees. The Bush administration has refused to release other photographs of Iraqi women forced at gunpoint to bare their breasts (although it has shown them to Congress)--ostensibly to prevent attacks on U.S. soldiers in Iraq, but in reality, one suspects, to prevent further domestic embarrassment. Earlier this month it emerged that an Iraqi woman in her 70s had been harnessed and ridden like a donkey at Abu Ghraib and another coalition detention center after being arrested last July. Some of the women involved may since have disappeared, according to human rights activists. Professor Huda Shaker al-Nuaimi who is researching the subject for Amnesty International, says: "We believe she ["Noor"] was raped and that she was pregnant by a U.S. guard. After her release from Abu Ghraib, I went to her house. The neighbors said her family had moved away. I believe she has been killed." This article is an excerpt from a report that appeared in The Guardian in London on May 19, 2004. |
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