Tracing the Trail of Torture

Embedding Torture as Policy from Guantanamo to Iraq

By Dahr Jamail
TomDispatch.com
Sunday 05 March 2006

They told him, "We are going to cut your head off and send you to hell."

Ali Abbas, a former detainee from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, was filling me in on the horrors he endured at the hands of American soldiers, contractors, and CIA operatives while inside the infamous prison.

It was May of 2004 when I documented his testimony in my hotel in Baghdad. "We will take you to Guantanamo," he said one female soldier told him after he was detained by U.S. forces on September 13, 2003. "Our aim is to put you in hell so you'll tell the truth. These are our orders - to turn your life into hell." And they did. He was tortured in Abu Ghraib less than half a year after the occupation of Iraq began.

Dahr Jamail is an independent journalist who spent over eight months reporting from occupied Iraq. For his entire article, see "Tracing the Trail of Torture: Embedding Torture as Policy from Guantanamo to Iraq".