Iraq: US forces have detained numerous Iraqis without charge. Lara Marlowe in Baghdad talks to their families to see how they are coping.
The Human Rights Organisation in Iraq (HROI) is sandwiched between a US tank position and the British embassy. A mine exploded in the front garden last week. While I was inside the old house, a mob that had just rioted against Iraqi police and US forces ran down the street, pelting the tank with stones.
But the HROI's unfortunate location doesn't deter dozens of men, women and children from queuing here every day, in the hope of receiving news of a loved one arrested by US forces.
While Hamza al-Kafi, a leading board member of the HROI, explained procedures to me, Safa Amer, a ten year-old girl from the northern city of Kirkuk, fixed her brown eyes on me and stood waiting to tell me her story.
Safa fainted when US forces burst into the family home as they ate dinner on the night of June 14th, and was hospitalised for shock. "They came in eight Humvees, and they marched us outside, at gunpoint," recounts Safa's mother, Iman Hatem Mohamed.
"They searched all the houses in our neighbourhood and they arrested six men, including my husband. They hit my 18 year-old son with the butts of their rifles. They handcuffed my husband and put a sack over his head. When we went back inside, they had dumped all our belongings on the floor. That was four months ago and we have no information and no money. I have eight children. How am I supposed to feed them?"
Ten year-old Safa keeps staring. "I want to see my father," she says repeatedly. "I want to tell him that I miss him." What was her husband's occupation? A discussion ensues, in Arabic, between Mrs Hatem Mohamed and a woman from the human rights organisation. The housewife from Kirkuk does not want me to know that her missing husband, Amer Taleb Fayad, worked for the intelligence service.
He had no rank, she insists. "He was not in the resistance. If he did something wrong, they should try him. They should tell us where he is. I went to the International Red Cross three months ago and they registered our case and they have learned nothing. Is this what the Americans mean by human rights? We were happy when the regime fell because we thought it would end the wars. We've changed our minds now."
Mr Fayad was barefooted, in a tracksuit, when he was arrested. "I asked to give him shoes, but they didn't give me a chance. My husband said, 'Why are you making such a ruckus? Why are you scaring my wife and children? I would have come peacefully.' We started screaming and shouting and my husband said, 'Don't cry.' Those were his last words to us. The Americans kept shouting , 'Shut up'.
The Yemeni interpreter said to me, 'Sister, don't cry. It's a matter of investigation. Your husband will be released tomorrow.' Except that tomorrow became four months." Mrs Hatem Mohamed and three other families who made the journey from Kirkuk suspect their Kurdish neighbours made false allegations to US forces. In 1991, after the Kurds seized autonomy from Baghdad, Saddam Hussein encouraged Sunni Muslim Arabs to move to Kirkuk, offering free housing and other benefits, to prevent the oil capital of the north being sucked into Kurdistan. The result, 12 years later, is a vendetta by Kurds, allied with US forces, against the transplanted Arabs.
"Thirty-three Arabs have been arrested by Jalal Talabani's PUK in the name of coalition forces," says Khaled Hussein Jassim of the Iraqi Institute for Human Rights in Kirkuk. "The Kurds are only 30 per cent of the population of Kirkuk, but they are our rulers now. They control the government and they won't let Arabs be employees. They won't let us be treated in hospital. We have to bring Arabs to Baghdad for treatment. There are 400 prisoners from Kirkuk. We know where about 300 of them are, but 100 are missing."
Ali Mohamed Shehab (43), was arrested with his son Firaz (21) on July 13th, "in our beds, at three in the morning". Mr Shehab left the Iraqi army in 1987, after leg wounds sustained in the Iran-Iraq war partially paralysed him.
He spent three months in US prison camps, moving from Kirkuk to Tikrit to Baghdad Airport to Nassiryah to Abu Ghoraib. Aside from an initial interview in which only basic information was asked, he was never questioned, was never charged nor tried. On September 11th, he was dumped on the highway without money, identity papers, or the slightest explanation as to why he had been detained.
Mr Shehab's hands were bound behind his back and his head was covered with a black sack each time he was moved with other prisoners in trucks. "I saw four men suffocate to death from the nylon bags on their head," he says. "We were thirsty and hungry. They gave us one bag of military rations for three months, but it was difficult to eat them. They tasted so strange."
A European judge working as an expert with the Coalition Provisional Authority confirmed that arrests by the US military are often arbitrary, and that men classified as "security detainees" - perhaps 30 per cent of all prisoners - enjoy no semblance of due process. "In Abu Ghoraib, they're holding a boy of 13 or 14 because they found the equivalent of $2,000 in Iranian riyals in his house. They say that proves he's a terrorist," the judge says. "It wouldn't hold up in any court in the world, but that boy is going to rot in prison."
Mr Shehab had prayed he'd find his son on his return home. "Firaz is a law student. He will lose two years of university, because he missed his exams, and now another academic year is starting. The Americans claim he's with the Fedayeen Saddam, but it's not true."
The story of Fatima Tarek Yahia (36) and her brother Yahia Sami (26) also from Kirkuk, is similar. At 4 a.m. on August 11th, US forces arrested their 55 year-old father, Yahia Sami and their other brother Ahmed (22). Ahmed, a police watchman, is still detained. "All we want is to know where he is. That's why we've come here, Ms Yahia explains. "The Kurds are the right hand of the Americans. The Americans trust the Kurds, but not the Arabs."
Jassem Mohamed (51), a retired officer in traditional Arab dress, travelled from Kirkuk because he wanted to visit his 26 year-old nephew Kais Mahmoud, also a military officer. Mr Mohamed has an advantage over the others - he knows that his nephew is held at Camp Vigilant - but he was turned away because no visits are allowed there.
Zeina and Sumaya Khadr Mohamed recorded the complaints of the delegation from Kirkuk. The sisters became volunteers at the HROI after their own claim for compensation, for their house destroyed on April 5th in the US bombardment, was rejected by the Americans. "I felt so sorry for the people I met in the queue that I wanted to help them," says Sumaya, who operates the HROI's computer system. "The way the Americans treat people, they are creating terrorists."