This article appeared in yesterday's Ann Arbor News
http://www.mlive.com/news/aanews/index.ssf?/xml/story.ssf/html_standard.xsl?/base/news-3/1046360501231171.xml

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One Iraqi ex-prisoner's story of hell on Earth

Ann Arbor man: Those in Saddam's prisons routinely tortured

Thursday, February 27, 2003
BY CATHERINE O'DONNELL
News Business Reporter


The ice cream truck looked ordinary, something small children would 
welcome. But it would deliver Fadhil Issa to a hell like few others on Earth.

Now living in Ann Arbor, the 43-year-old Issa said he spent 11 years in an 
Iraqi prison, driven there with other people in the back of the truck.

"I just want the people of the United States and their government to know 
what has gone on," said Issa, sitting in the small living room of the 
apartment he shares with his wife, Maysoon Abdullha, and their four 
children, ages 3 months through 6 years.

Six feet and broad-shouldered with gray-flecked black hair, Issa walks with 
a pronounced limp, the result of torture he says was inflicted in prison.

Issa, who is not related to the two other Issa families in Ann Arbor, grew 
up in the southern Iraq province of Basra, the son of an antiques dealer. 
He and his wife are Shiites, practicing a moderate version of Islam.

As a youngster in the town of Al-Zubair, Issa attended school until he was 
in his teens, when his family could no longer afford it. To help support 
them, he did manual jobs until 19, when like other young males, he was 
required to serve three years in the Iraqi army.

But Issa opposed the Iran-Iraq war. He deserted the army twice. The third 
time, in 1981, the government threw him in prison.

He and other prisoners were blindfolded and herded into the ice cream 
truck. It was July, and guards turned on the truck's heat. Wedged into 
individual slots, the prisoners sweltered for hours. Issa doesn't know 
where they were taken, but believes it was somewhere west of Baghdad.

At the prison, Issa said, guards put him in a 13-by-16-foot cell occupied 
by 50 other men. In the corner stood one toilet.

Some were there, he said, because an acquaintance had reported them as 
opponents of Saddam Hussein.

"If you didn't turn people in, you were considered against the party," said 
Issa. "And if people in a cafe were heard talking against Hussein, their 
tongues might be cut out, and they'd be paraded about the city."

Life in prison was grim at best; a nightmare at worst.

Orientation often included hot irons applied to chests or backs, he said. 
"They wanted prisoners to say they were against the regime," explained Issa.

Women as well as men were housed in the prison.

"You have to remember that Muslims have pride and dignity about 
relationships between men and women," said Issa. As humiliation, women and 
men were sometimes stripped naked and hung by their arms opposite each other.

"I remember one veteran whose wife was hung in front of a stranger. He lost 
his mind after that."

Sometimes, parents were forced to watch as their children were murdered, he 
said.

In 1982, as part of random torture, guards chained Issa hand and foot to a 
table. A guard then jumped him from above, breaking five vertebrae. With no 
medical attention, the back failed to heal properly, and Issa could no 
longer walk; fellow prisoners thereafter carried him on a stretcher.

"My faith kept me going," said Issa. "I prayed that God would have mercy 
and forgive (the guards)." Uneducated, they belonged to the lowest social 
orders. "They didn't know any better," Issa said.

Day in, day out, prisoners were required to sit doing nothing. Except for 
prayers twice daily, they were forbidden to speak. "When I first saw them," 
said Issa, "I thought they were dead."

In the morning, guards distributed one and a half slices of bread per 
prisoner. Later, there was soup. Three times a week there was broth, 
sometimes with rice. Each evening, guards ordered prisoners to watch Saddam 
Hussein on televisions in corridors.

Issa said he wore the same clothes for eight years. Prisoners were then 
issued pajama-like shirts and pants; he wore his the last three years. When 
Issa entered prison, he weighed about 275; when leaving, 187.

Juan R. Cole, a professor of Middle Eastern history at the University of 
Michigan, says the conditions in Iraqi prisons are well documented. "The 
prisons are teeming and brutal. Many prisoners are tortured or summarily 
executed."

It took the Gulf War and its aftermath to free Issa and his fellow 
prisoners. A local uprising against Hussein drew United Nations observers 
who pressured the dictator to release inmates in at least two prisons. "My 
happiest day after that was seeing my father for the first time in 30 
years," recalls Issa, whose father had lived in Kuwait.

But the release "was all for show," he said. When the U.N. observers 
departed, Hussein had leaders of the uprising murdered.

Sometime after Issa's release, his name appeared on lists of traitors to 
the regime posted around Baghdad. His father then bribed a smuggler to take 
his son from Iraq to Jordan.

During those years, there were many local uprisings in Iraq, and its 
borders were relatively porous, said Nazih Hassan, a software engineer and 
president of the Islamic Center in Ann Arbor.

Issa's stories of torture don't surprise him - he says he's known of a 
number of people similarly tortured.

According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, up to two 
million Iraqis have fled the country in the last 15 years - about 10 
percent of the population. Outside the Middle East, Iraqis seeking asylum 
in the West have steadily increased. Between 1989 and 2001,the number 
climbed to about 277,500, said an institute report.

For Issa, asylum was the only option. He spent several years in Syria, 
meeting and marrying Abdullha in 1997. A year later, sponsored by members 
of the Arabic community in Dearborn, they came to the United States.

At the University of Michigan Hospitals, Issa has undergone three back 
surgeries. His legs remain numb, but when healed, he wants to work. 
Meantime, he and Maysoon look for help studying for citizenship.

They also know war may be inevitable.

"If that's the only way to remove Saddam, if that's the last resort," said 
Issa. "People in Iraq hope there's a war because they live in terror."

Issa and Abdullha also wait for change. "My happiest day," said Issa, "will 
be when Saddam is gone."

Catherine O'Donnell can be reached at [log in to unmask] or (734) 
994-6831.



© 2003 Ann Arbor News.

--------------------------------
Tom Brandt
Northtech Systems, Inc.
130 S. 1st Street, Suite 220
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-1343
http://www.northtech.com/

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