Saleh Nizar, Iraq “I thought I would not stand the torture”

Saleh Nizar, a 58-year-old gardener, says he was tortured in an Iraqi prison after he was arrested and accused of participating in an attack in the capital, Baghdad. He was arrested on 15 October 2006 and set free on 5 April 2007 after he was helped by a senior Iraqi officer who said that Nizar was his gardener and that he was definitely innocent.

As result of the torture he endured, one of his legs sustained serious injuries and doctors said it might require amputation. Nizar, who has a heart condition which he did not receive treatment for while in prison, now spends much of his time in hospitals and clinics trying to stay alive.

“For the nearly six months that I was in prison I didn’t have a day of peace. Either they were torturing me or shouting at me, using the ugliest words, accusing me of being a Saddam Hussein follower who deserved the same fate as his [death by hanging].

“The most common torture was the use of electric shocks and cigarettes to burn our skin. Other times they would beat us with pieces of wood or electrical wire.

“Some detainees were also raped by the officers in front of everyone. And if the victim tried to run away, they hit him with a piece of wood. The suffering I endured in prison was doubled because in addition to the pain that I had after each torture session, there was also the desperate screaming of the other prisoners.

“I thought I would not stand the torture in prison. Every time I returned to my cell after being tortured, I couldn’t even drink the little water they gave us because I felt like all my body was burning. Sometimes, there were prisoners who came back [from torture sessions] with an odour of burning meat.

The most common torture was the use of electric shocks and cigarettes to burn our skin. Other times they would beat us with pieces of wood or electrical wire.

“One day, while I was being taken for interrogation, a man who I had worked for at his home and who was a senior officer in the Defence Ministry saw me. He immediately came to see what was happening because since I had been arrested from my home in Bataween district, I hadn’t gone to his home to take care of his garden.

“The interrogator told the officers to release me immediately and take me home. But before releasing me, they took me to the torture room and forced me to hit two guys in the room with electrical wires. When I refused, they hit my face and said that it was my commemoration for leaving the prison.

“Since I was released, my health has deteriorated and I don’t feel strong anymore. Sometimes I think I’ll die when I see the blood clots in my leg and the big wound caused by a nail in a piece of wood which they hit me with once.

“I would like to seek justice because my life was destroyed in this prison ordeal but I’m scared that if I do that I will be killed by them [prison officers] and maybe cause problems to my ex-employer who helped get me released.

“My family suffered all those months because they couldn’t get any information about me and they thought that I was dead. My wife had a heart attack and my only son was killed in an explosion while I was in the prison, leaving his wife alone with three children.

“The only thing I have now is to wait for death because those bastards knew how to end my life in this world.”

as/ar/ed