CPTnet
May 22, 2004

IRAQ: CPT Iraq Retracts Prisoner Abuse Testimony

Two leaders of an Iraqi human rights group notified members of Christian
Peacemaker Teams in Iraq that they have reason to believe that the
testimony of man who identified himself as one of the detainees pictured in
the infamous photos from Abu Ghraib [See May 12 release, "CPT takes
testimony from photographed detainee describing torture at Abu Ghaib"]
  is fraudulent.

One of the members of the human rights group took the testimony of the
self-proclaimed released detainee, "Salaam,"* at the same time as Le Anne
Clausen and Stewart Vriesinga. The group later acquired information
convincing them that Salaam's testimony contained some falsified
information at least, and could be completely fabricated. They reported
this to members of CPT several days after CPT released the testimony.

CPT Iraq often lacks the resources to investigate fully testimonies of
families of detainees and detainees themselves. Even when team members are
able to investigate deeply such testimonies, we acknowledge that what we
report are personal accounts, which may or may not accurately represent the
truth. When we have doubts about the truthfulness of testimonies that we
are writing up, we do not release them, nor do we include them in our
reports. While we cannot guarantee that all of the testimonies we do report
are absolutely true, we only report testimonies that we have no good reason
to doubt.

Since we now have good reason to doubt the testimony of Salaam, we will not
include it in future reports; we will remove it from the CPT website, and
we ask readers to disregard it.

CPT Iraq recently took another testimony of a man who claims to have
suffered abuse in Abu Ghraib at the hands of the US soldiers pictured in
the infamous photographs. We will soon release an abridged version of his
testimony, entitled "Testimony of Saddam Saleh Al Rawi," and make available
the full testimony on the CPT website (www.cpt.org). We waited to release
this testimony until we confirmed with our contacts at a local human rights
group that he is legitimate.

*Salaam is not the man's real name.