Obaid Al-Suhaimi, Asharq Al-Awsat

JEDDAH, 24 June 2004 — A Saudi just freed from Iraq’s infamous Abu Ghraib prison said he had seen prisoners tortured and others die from lack of medical treatment or from shelling of the facility.

Khaled Al-Qaisoom, who was released last week after 10 months in detention, said he and another Saudi were arrested as they prepared to leave Iraq on Aug. 29 last year after a bomb blast in Najaf killed at least 82 people, including senior scholar Muhammad Baqer Al-Hakim.

“We were arrested near the Syrian border on charges of assassinating Hakim. News reports at the time that two Saudis suspected of involvement in the murder of Hakim were arrested referred to us,” he said.

Al-Qaisoom said he was on a visit to Najaf when Hakim was killed and he was detained. He said his 10-month stint in Abu Ghraib near Baghdad had been extremely harsh, and US prison interrogators threatened to unleash dogs on him or electrocute him, but he had not actually been tortured.

However, others had been, including one Iraqi “who suffered immense torture. The Americans stripped him of his clothes in winter time, sprayed him with water, then threw him to the ground and took turns at beating him until he was unconscious,” Al-Qaisoom said.

He said “many” prisoners, including two in his own camp, died after they were denied medicines for kidney, liver and heart conditions or the like. One Kurd was sexually abused and died when prison guards shelled a camp “without reason.”

Food was also scarce, and the treatment got worse when there was fighting between US forces and resistance fighters, such as in Fallujah or in Najaf and Karbala.

“There are all sorts of bizarre things in Abu Ghraib — prisoners more than 90 years old, insane people and children,” he said.

Al-Qaisoom said his jailers, who did not allow him visits, asked him questions such as whether he had ties with Osama Bin Laden, met Taleban leader Mullah Omar or knew anything about Al-Qaeda operative Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi.

Al-Qaisoom said another Saudi detainee was freed at the same time last week but he did not know his whereabouts. He said he knew of three other Saudis still in prison in Iraq, including two in Basra.

Local newspapers have regularly carried stories about Saudis detained in Abu Ghraib, especially since news broke in April of the abuse of prisoners held there by US troops. They have put the number at around a dozen.