Survival of Abu-Ghraib Jail

This entry is part 1 of 10 in the series Survival of Abu-Ghraib Jail

Dr. Ala Musa Hasan | Exclusive to iKurd.net

During the gloomy era of 1980 episode, adult males between the ages of 17-35 Failis youths were detained and sent to Abu-Ghraib maximum security prison with no legal procedures. At that time when I was there, there were about 8000 Faili youths incarcerated with me.

The alleged reason for this act, due to the fact that the Faili Kurds are Shiite Muslim and they would become a potential recruits for the Iranian government once they are deported to Iran.

In April of 1980, few members of the Iraqi Intelligent Unit came to our house at 12:00 midnight and they wanted to search our house, after 2 hours of searching our house for no reason, they asked my father to accompany them and they told my mother that he will be back home in 30 minutes, but that did not happen, and since that night, my father never came home. I was almost 17 years old at that time, and since then I never saw my father again.

One month after my father arrest, I was at school and when I came home, I saw many police officers inside my house and they wanted to take us to Al-Karada police station for the purpose of deportation. They seized all our Iraqi documents and they wanted to send us to the Bus station in order to be deported from Iraq.

However, after the police officer examined our Iraqi documents, he refused to send us to the Bus station, because he stated that we were a genuine Iraqis and we should not be deported.

After being in Al-Karada police station for two weeks, the Iraqi Minister of Internal (Sadoun Shakir) came to the police station and he was screaming with anger and his dreadful words at the police officer and ordered him to deport us right away. At that night, I was separated from my family and was placed in Al-Karada Jail, and two days after that, I was re-located to Abu-Ghraib Jail for no reason.

At Abu-Ghraib Jail, I witnessed all the dreadful events that happened to us, and all the verbal, emotional, and the physical assaults that Tooke place at that institution. I also saw the grief and the tears in those young youth’s eyes who were incarcerated just for the reason of belonging to a particular ethnic and social group.

Those youths had future hopes and dreams for themselves, but they were not able to accomplish them, because the bloody Saddam made a prejudice decision that the Faili Kurds must be completely abolished from Iraq.

We were placed in the maximum security section of Abu-Ghraib Jail, and we used to sleep on the floor with two blankets, one blanket to sleep on and the other to cover with.

We also used to shower and wash our clothing with cold water during winter and summer time. I still cannot forget those days and the fear, starvation, and the disgrace that we experienced at Abu-Ghraib institution.

Dr. Ala Musa Hasan, a Canada-based Faili Kurd, PHD Candidates in Clinical Psychology.

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