September 11-17, 2003

city beat

Nowhere to Be Found

GONE, NOT FORGOTTEN: Ali Ahmed and wife Lemiah Ibrahim have had no luck finding their sons who are in U.S. custody. Photo By: Rich Miller

An Iraqi carpenter talks of being “disappeared.”

by Rich Miller

BAGHDAD -- The American soldiers smashed through 68-year-old Ali Ahmedís door at 2:30 in the morning. They roughed up the one of Aliís four sons whoíd gone downstairs to see what the commotion was about. Then, they handcuffed everyone except his wife and 12-year-old boy.

Ransacking the tiny apartment, the soldiers took what little money Ali had before hauling him and three of his sons off to what was formerly known as Saddam Hussein's presidential palace, a sprawling compound not far away.

For the next month, Ali essentially disappeared from the face of the earth. His wife and young son, Hassan, tried desperately -- and unsuccessfully -- to find him. There were no phone calls, letters, or hints of whether he was alive or dead or would ever return.

A few weeks after finally being released, Ali sat in his sweltering apartment above a ramshackle store and offered flat Pepsi to two visitors who had come to hear his bizarre but all-too-common story.

The living room wall behind him was badly cracked and, except for a garish red and gold rooster-shaped clock, completely bare. Ali, a carpenter by trade, hasn't worked since his ordeal, exhausted by the physical and mental stress and anguished that three of his sons are still somewhere in U.S. custody.

Ali said he was handcuffed for four days at the palace while sitting in the blistering heat with his sons. Never told why he was arrested, Ali says he was interrogated just once, on the first day. And they asked just two questions: "What is your name?" and "Do you have any enemies?"

Ali and his sons were eventually moved to the Baghdad soccer stadium, where they stayed for more than a week with about 30 other prisoners in an abandoned storeroom. The water, no longer warm as it was at the palace, was tepid, but at least their handcuffs were finally removed.

A week later, they were transferred to Baghdad International Airport, where U.S. forces have constructed a makeshift prison. Ali and two sons were put in a tent with about 50 other prisoners. The third son, Omar, who sold pottery from a little stand outside the family apartment, was taken away.

Ali's tent shared just two latrines with five other tents.

The filth, he said, was overwhelming.

A diabetic, Ali finally collapsed from the stress and lack of medicine. Unable to speak or even stand, he was hospitalized and treated for severe dehydration and given drugs. After six days, Ali recovered and was moved to the notorious Abu Ghurayb prison, about 45 minutes from Baghdad.

Again, he was put into a tent with about 40 other prisoners. But this time, his sons were not transferred with him. Eleven days later, Ali was told he would leave the following morning.

By then, he'd been in custody for nearly a month. He was never allowed contact with the outside world and was never told why he was arrested. His prisoner identification card, written in English, gives the reason for his arrest as "Baath Party." A longtime family friend insists, however, that Ali has never been even remotely politically involved. And even if he was, prior membership in the Baath Party by a poor carpenter is not a crime.

The friend, outraged at the arrests, also insisted the family has never been in any trouble with the law. Ali's wife, Lemiah Ibrahim, said she was rebuffed by the local police about her husband's whereabouts and ran into a brick wall at the Red Cross, but never approached the American military because, she said, she was too afraid.

"Why would she be afraid of us?" asked one relatively high-level official with the Coalition Provisional Authority's media office when told this story.

The official seemed sincere, but the maddening ignorance of his question illustrated a growing worry that the Americans have no idea how they are perceived by ordinary Iraqis. According to numerous aid workers and international activists, Ali's abduction story isn't rare. Americans, criticized throughout the world for not providing enough security for Iraqis, have detained thousands of people without formally charging them.

"What they're doing is completely stupid," snapped a private security worker. "They don't provide enough security generally, and the few times they do, they go all the way overboard."

"They've occupied all of Saddam's palaces, so maybe that has caused them to act like him," suggested one Iraqi, pointing out that Hussein regularly arrested people in the middle of the night and whisked them away without informing anyone about their fate.

The Americans bristle at the suggestion that they are "disappearing" Iraqi citizens and claim one reason prisoners' families can't find their loved ones is an American tracking system that can't cope with the various English spellings of detainees' Arabic names.

The system is fixed now, they say, so families should be able to locate some relatives while others -- the Americans won't say who or how many -- will remain in an informational black hole.

American soldiers guarding the Abu Ghurayb prison said the facility couldn't provide any information about Ali's former status. A large sign near them warned Iraqis that they couldn't visit prisoners or find anything out about them.

"You'll have to contact Seemah," said one soldier. When asked what, and where, Seemah was, the soldier said he had no idea. It turns out "Seemah" is CMA, the Civilian Military Affairs unit where Americans keep the computerized list of Iraqi prisoners. But if Americans guarding one of the country's main prisons don't even know what "Seemah" is, it's doubtful that many Iraqis do, either.

As for the conditions of Ali's confinement, an American military spokesperson said prisoners are "treated as human beings and given all comforts."

Today, there's no judicial system in Iraq, so there are no checks and balances on the powers of American troops and Iraqi police. (A military spokesperson said there's no timetable for getting the judiciary up and running.)

Asked why he thinks he and his sons were arrested, Ali is at a complete loss. All he can figure was that after the local Muslim imam asked the neighborhood to turn in looters, his son, Omar, informed on a few of the worst characters.

Perhaps, Ali said, the looters took their revenge by fingering his family to the Americans.

Rich Miller is a Chicago-based journalist who traveled to Iraq to find stories that have been glossed over by the mainstream media. Being There will appear in City Paper throughout the next month.