The Torture Files

jewelry and held his wife and 10-year-old daughter at gunpoint. Al-Rahman was arrested on the third raid. Soldiers accused him of being a member of the Fedayeen militia, which he denies.

“The soldiers took me to their base in the Al-Shaab district of Baghdad. They kept me alone in a room with my hands zip-tied behind my back for two days, feeding me only one spoonful of Army-rationed food per day and giving me a total of two glasses of water during that time,” al-Rahman alleges. He was repeatedly beaten during that period, he told CPT researchers.

He was then taken to a prison camp at the Baghdad airport: “When I finally got inside the prison, the soldiers took me to see the ‘doctor,’ who was a large, muscular, violent U.S. soldier, at the prison hospital. The ‘doctor’ examined me by kicking me to make me roll over or turn around and boring his fist into my chest to check my consciousness. The ‘doctor’

reported to the other soldiers that I was still alive and conscious.”

According to his testimony, al-Rahman was interrogated for several days, and was taken again to the prison’s clinic. “This time, the ‘doctor’ examined me by listening to loud music and dancing for a while, and then he turned me back over to the guards.” Later, he says, his interrogators “punished me by shocking me with a powerful electric prod for three continuous minutes.”

Al-Rahman reports that he was later transferred to Camp Bucca, hundreds of miles from Baghdad, where conditions were much better. Despairing of his release, al-Rahman says, he attempted suicide while at Camp Bucca, and spent three weeks in the prison infirmary. He was released from custody in Baghdad on September 14, nearly three months after his arrest.