prison camp

Throughout my time in Iraq I was in no doubt that individuals detained by UKSF and handed over to our American colleagues would be tortured. During my time as member of the US/UK Task Force, three soldiers recounted to me an incident in which they had witnessed the brutal interrogation of two detainees. Partial drowning and an electric cattle prod were used during this interrogation and this amounted to torture. It was the widely held assumption that this would be the fate of any individuals handed over to our America colleagues.

Typical first time interrogation consisted of some kind of heavy metal music really loud, strobe light, lot of yelled questions and stuff like that, until they finally would break down and cry and say “I don’t know anything, I don’t know anything!” If [the detainee] was a particular target of interest that they thought knew something, you know, they’d grab him, punch him—stomach, neck, arms—you know, right in here [indicating the back of the arm, above the elbow], you’d punch them in the back of the elbows—hold your arms up—you’d punch them in the back of the elbow, I guess, so not to leave a mark. . .. Particularly people of interest, they really want to talk to, they would use everything.

He’s on his knees, usually a rifle pointed at him, strobe light going, music going, whatever. Then the guys sitting at the desk asking him questions directly. It was always yelling at that point—you had to, in order to hear [over the music]... For the most part, that would drag on for quite a while. They’d ask and ask and ask and ask.

I would say, about, overall, about half the guys to 60 percent of the guys got at least one gut shot - either punched or the butt of the rifle in the stomach... I couldn’t put an exact figure, somewhere on the low ball, I would say, 60 percent...

“And if you were completely uncooperative?” Nick described one of the worst cases he saw, which took place around July 2003, involving a detainee who a Special Forces team had arrested... “They brought him back [to FOB Tiger] and he got the mess beat out of him,” Nick said. “He got the hell beat out of him.” Nick told Human Rights Watch what he saw when the detainee was brought into the interrogation building:

"... Standard procedure, when I was there, you [i.e., the detainees] had twenty-four hour inside the Conex [container] . . . you’re blind-folded, you’re zip-stripped, your hands are behind your back; your feet usually weren’t, unless there was a particularly volatile prisoner—somebody who’d caused a lot of trouble, they’d hitch the feet as well. You were there, twenty-four hours: no sleep, no food, no water."

The temperatures inside the container, Nick said, were extreme: