CPT Iraq - Human Rights Testimonies

Abdul Samia Ibrahim Ali

Abdul Samia is a resident of Falluja. He gave the following testimony to CPTers Maxine Nash and Peggy Gish on January 19, 2005 at Abu Hanifa Mosque in Baghdad.

Abdul Samia is a middle-aged man who speaks English fairly well. He lived in the U.S. for five years, and in 1985 received a master's degree from a university in Nebraska. He has many friends there and respects the American people. “It's the government that's the problem,” he said. He said that the U.S. soldiers in Iraq seem very different from the people he knew in Nebraska.

Abdul Samia lived in the Al Andalus area of Falluja but, before the November 2004 attacks started, he took his family to stay with relatives in Baghdad. He stayed in Falluja to protect his home. He recalled lots of heavy bombing, and said that U.S. soldiers would “shoot anything that moved.”

According to Abdul Samia, U.S. soldiers captured him from his home five or six days after the attacks began (on or near November 14, 2004). About 15 soldiers entered his home by breaking down the door. They made him lie face-down on the floor while they tied his hands behind his back. They put a plastic feed sack over his head and took him to a U.S. tank.

From there, soldiers took him to a big house in Falluja that soldiers used as a temporary holding facility. The Americans called it Abu Dijaj, or the Chicken House. After sunset, the soldiers took the detainees to a farm for four or five days. At the farm, Abdul Samia saw humvees carrying loads of 7Up, Pepsi and other goods taken from the stores in Falluja. Then soldiers took the prisoners to Tarik (Big Rock) in Falluja. At this holding place, Abdul Samia thought about 3,000 Iraqi men were kept. Soldiers assigned him the number 2578.

Abdul Samia said that the soldiers treated all detainees as fighters or enemies, whether young or old, and spoke to them roughly. He thought most of the men arrested were innocent. It was cold, but they weren't allowed to put on hats. If men were suspected of being mujahadeen, they were treated badly. (“Mujahadeen literally means “fighters for the cause of God” but is used by many as a catch-all phrase for insurgents). Abdul Samia heard rumors of men being sexually abused. He also heard (but did not witness) an account of a soldier who put dog food on a prisoner's body and then let a dog eat the food. He did see a fellow prisoner whose face was badly beaten, as well as a prisoner with broken ribs who claimed that soldiers kicked him with a boot. Abdul Samia believed he was treated better than most prisoners, and was released sooner, because he spoke English. When soldiers released him, they told him that he had been detained for his own protection.

He was released about two weeks later and came to Baghdad to rejoin his family. As of January 19, 2005, he had not yet returned to Falluja, and so he did not know whether or not his house is still standing.

At the close of the interview, Abdul Samia asked for medical help for his six-year-old daughter, who had been shot in the head during the war. Soldiers took her to a field hospital, then to southern Iraq, and then to Kuwait for treatment. She is OK but still needs surgery to cover the hole in her skull. The team referred his to an Iraqi doctor who arranges for such complex care outside Iraq.