CPTnet
March 29, 2004

IRAQ: Imprisoned scientist, Dr. Ali Al Za'ag, freed

 Dr. Ali Al Za'ag, a professor at Baghdad University, had been in detention
for thirty-eight days when coalition forces freed him on March 4, 2004.
U.S. officials subjected him for the sixteenth time to interrogation about
Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD.)

In late January he had been urged by the U.S. forces to go to the General
Information Center (GIC) to get a gun permit in order to protect himself
from the threats to the scientific community. At the GIC he was arrested by
a U.S. soldier who refused to listen to his explanation that he had been
interrogated fifteen times last summer and declared "clean."

From the GIC he traveled to the Green Zone where he was confined in a three
meter by three-meter wire cage that he likened to an animal cage. U.S.
military police in two humvees then transported him to Cropper Camp at the
Baghdad Airport.

MPs searched him for the third time, but they were not allowed inside the
camp, which Dr. Ali assumed to be under the auspices of U.S. military
intelligence. Upon entry, guards took his picture, did an eye print, took
fingerprints, and, with their computer, printed out a wristband that gave
him a prisoner of war number.

Guards placed him in a small cell about the same size as his earlier cage.
He explained that as a biologist he preferred not to call his humiliating
confinement a "cell," one of the essential building blocks of all of life
which God had called "good."

For five days he stayed in solitary confinement before he was able to
question guards about the reason for his arrest. After ten days he was
given pencil and paper to write the anonymous person in charge to ask the
same question. Two men visited him the next day. He reported that they
said, "We didn't know you were here. Sorry, you shouldn't be here." He
replied, "So, let me go home." They continued, "This bureaucratic system
won't easily get you released."

"Will I be here for days or weeks?" he asked. "We don't know," they
concluded.

Days later, after he had given up hope for an early release, guards took him
from his meal to another location where three people questioned him for two
hours. On, named Brend, had been one of the interrogators last summer.
They asked questions, he wrote down answers, and then the report was sent to
Washington, DC. Dr. Ali commented after his release, "They are looking for
'true lies,' which don't exist."

Some days later, guards came to his room and said he could go home. After
thirty-eight days in detention he arrived on his doorstep to be greeted by
his incredulous wife, son, and daughter.

 At the university, colleagues and students sacrificed three sheep to
recognize his return, often done after a person goes through a grueling
event.