CPTnet
July 9, 2004

IRAQ UPDATE: June 22-27, 2004

 Tuesday, June 22, 2004 The team attended an art and cultural event,
sponsored by a consortium of Iraqi non-governmental organizations.

Wednesday, June 23, 2004
At 8:40 am, the team heard a loud explosion.

Thursday, June 24, 2004
Maxine Nash, Greg Rollins and Sheila Provencher visited an Iraqi human
rights group. On the way there, they waited with Iraqis while U.S. soldiers
investigated a suspicious package the soldiers thought might be a bomb in
the street.

Anne Montgomery and Provencher talked to U.S. soldiers in the
Palestine/Sheraton hotel complex. Two young soldiers said they were in the
Oregon National Guard and usually fought forest fires. They
mentioned a house raid they had been part of the night before and said that
no one was hurt in the raid.

Friday, June 25, 2004
At 8:00 am, the team heard several loud but distant explosions.

At 6:00 pm, a contingent of sixteen Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, two jeeps and
three U.S. soldiers patrolled down the street where the Christian Peacemaker
Team (CPT) lives. One U.S. soldier greeted Rollins in Arabic as they passed.
When Rollins replied in English in a thick New York accent, the Iraqi
soldiers laughed. Provencher talked to one of the U.S. soldiers who said
their patrol was a training exercise.

Saturday, June 26, 2004
Provencher and Rollins traveled to Kerbala, two hours south of Baghdad. They
visited an Iraqi human rights center where they took the testimony of two
Iraqi men and the testimony of an Iraqi family whose son is in Abu Ghraib
prison. The first man's testimony was for of CPT's Detainee Campaign.
Coalition forces detained the man, another Iraqi and four Iranians for
three and a half months on suspicion they were spies. Coalition forces found
all seven men innocent. The man said Coalition soldiers and guards did not
abuse them during their detention.

The second man, aged 59, was detained from May 15 to July 4, 2003, and then
retaken from July 9 to December 28. He suffered sexual abuse, beatings,
strokes and heart attacks while in several different holding facilities,
hospitals, Camp Bucca and Abu Ghraib. The man claimed the then-governor of
Kerbala had framed him. Coalition forces acknowledged they had no evidence
that the man was a former Ba'ath party member, nor a member of any militia,
as they had been told. Despite his suffering, the man did not express any
anger or hatred towards the U.S. soldiers and guards who abused him. He
expressed great love for a doctor at Abu Ghraib prison who treated him with
compassion. "Dr. Jassy is my son," he said. "I will never forget him."

The family interviewed had seen their son two days before and said he
looked tired. They said a Central Iraqi court judge had recently tried
their son in the Green Zone, the area used as headquarters by the Coalition
Provisional Authority (CPA.) They learned the judge would issue his decision
on July 4, 2003.

On the trip back to Baghdad, the CPTers observed burnt out cars in two
different locations. The cars had not been on the road in the morning.

Sunday, June 27, 2003
At 8:00 pm, the team heard four four mortars explode.