TORTURE HOUSE

This story appeared in Sunday's New York Times.

4 Iraqis found alive in torture center

Marines discovered the men, who told of shocks and beatings. "They kill... every day," one said.

By Sabrina Tavernise

KARABILAH, Iraq - Marines on an operation to eliminate insurgents that began Friday night broke through the outside wall of a building in this small rural village and found a torture center equipped with electric wires, a noose, handcuffs, a 574-page jihad manual - and four beaten and shackled Iraqis.

The U.S. military has found torture houses after invading towns occupied by insurgents - in Fallujah, an anti-insurgent assault last fall uncovered almost 20 such sites - but rarely have they come across victims who have lived to tell the tale.

The men told the Marines, from Company K, Third Marines, Second Division, that they had been tortured with electric shocks and flogged with a strip of rubber for more than two weeks, unseen behind the windows of black glass.

One of them, Ahmed Isa Fathil, 19, a former member of the new Iraqi army, said he had been held and tortured there for 22 days. All the while, he said, his face was almost entirely taped over and his hands were cuffed.

In an interview hours after he was freed, he said he had never even seen the faces of his captors, who occasionally whispered at him, "We will kill you." He said they did not question him, and he did not know what they wanted. Nor did he ever expect to be released.

"They kill somebody every day," said Fathil, whose hands were so swollen he could not open a can of Coke offered to him by a Marine. "They've killed a lot of people."

...The manual recovered - a fat, well-thumbed Arabic paperback - listed itself as the 2005 First Edition of The Principles of Jihadist Philosophy, by Abdel Rahman al-Ali. Its chapters included "How to Select the Best Hostage," and "The Legitimacy of Cutting the Infidels' Heads." Also recovered were several fake passports, a black hood, the painkiller Percocet, handcuffs, and an explosives how-to guide. Three cars loaded with explosives were parked in a garage outside the house. The Marines blew them up.

Fathil said his ordeal began as he was having a lunch of lettuce and cucumbers in his home in the desert village of Rabot with his mother and brother. An Opel sedan pulled up. Two men in masks carrying machine guns got out, seized him, and, leaving his mother sobbing, put him in the trunk of their car.

They drove to the house here. They taped his face, put cotton in his ears, and began to beat him.

The only possible explanation for the seizure he could think of was his time in the new Iraqi army. Unemployed and illiterate, Fathil signed up after the U.S. occupation began. But nine months ago, when continuing working meant risking the wrath of the jihadists, he quit. In all, 10 friends from his unit have been killed, he said. So have his uncle and his uncle's son, though neither ever worked as soldiers.

The captors tended to talk in whispers, he said, telling him five times a day, in low voices in his ear, to pray, and offering him sand instead of water to wash himself. Just once, he said, he asked if he could see his mother, and one of them said to him, "You won't leave until you are dead." Fathil did not know there were other hostages. He found out only after the captors left and he was able to remove the tape from his eyes.

The routine in the house was regular. Because of the windows, it was always dark inside. Fathil said he was fed once a day and was allowed to use a bathroom as necessary in the back of the house.

When Marines burst in, one of the captives was lying under a stairwell, badly beaten. At first, they thought he was dead.

The others were emaciated and battered. Fathil had fared the best. The other three were taken by medical helicopter to Balad, a base near Baghdad with a hospital.

This account describes a REAL place of torture.

Is this what's going on at Gitmo, or even Abu Ghraib?

Does the American military use techniques that would be detailed in "The Legitimacy of Cutting the Infidels' Heads"?

Have our soldiers used electric shocks on detainees?

Are detainees in American custody fed once a day?

This report shows what torture means. Although there have been abuses, nothing remotely like this sort of thing is SOP at American facilities.

Frequently, the argument is made that if we don't treat our prisoners well, we can't expect hostile forces to treat our troops well when they fall into enemy hands. The existence of these torture houses shoots that theory to hell.

Read about the torture center. Recognize that we treat the overwhelming majority of our prisoners humanely. Take note that the insurgents are not following our lead. They obviously don't abide by the "do unto others" rule.

If the Dems want to experience a gulag, they should visit one of these Iraqi torture houses. Amnesty International and the International Red Cross should also pay a visit.

In the meantime, they should think twice before they assign gulag status to Gitmo and group American soldiers in with Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot.