|
Jailed militia leader counselled ex-foes
When Sheikh Ali Bapir saw his fellow prisoners at
the US-run detention centre near Baghdad airport he
was angry. They were the men he had fought against
most of his life. Now he was in prison with them.
He knew their faces from TV: Ali Hassan al-Majid,
aka Chemical Ali, the alleged mastermind of gas
attacks on the Kurds and of the brutal suppression
of the Shia; Taha Yassin Ramadan, the former Iraqi
vice-president and a confidante of Saddam Hussein;
Tariq Aziz, the former deputy prime minister in the
Ba'athist regime; and Barzan al-Tikriti, Saddam's
half-brother.
In the near distance, separated from the others by a
barbed wire fence, was Saddam.
Released without charge at the end of last month
after 22 months in custody, Sheikh Ali, 44, the
leader of the Komala Islami Kurdistan (Kurdistan
Islamic group), spoke to the Guardian about his
encounters with the former Iraqi leadership.
"Why did you put me in here with criminals and mass
murderers?" he would ask of his interrogators. "I
have never been a Ba'athist and I am not a
terrorist. I even killed my brother because he spied
for the Iraqi intelligence."
But as the weeks progressed, he channelled his rage
into pity and became a spiritual guide to the ex-Ba'athist
leaders, teaching them the Qur'an and leading them
in prayer.
"At first I was hostile to them," he said. "What
they did to my people and the Iraqi people in
general was not to be forgiven. But they were also
in prison and in a weak position. It was my duty
under Islam to show mercy, even to these people who
had never shown mercy to others."
Sheikh Ali was reluctant to talk about individuals
but said many of the former leaders looked like
"broken men".
His sermons and counselling had an effect. "Some of
them did recognise their mistakes. Some of them told
me they would go to their cells and open the Qur'an
and cry because now they made sense of what they did
and how horrifying were the results of their
actions."
Saddam was in a separate part of the prison, and
even though the sheikh could see him, they never
spoke.
Before the war, Sheikh Ali and his 3,000 followers
were based in the Kurdish town of Khormal. Like many
political leaders who fought against the regime, he
also commanded a militia - of about 1,000 men -
which controlled a mountain area of north-eastern
Iraq close to the Iranian border.
Sheikh Ali opposed terrorism and advocated ties with
the west.
But his territory abutted the region controlled by
the mili tant group Ansar al-Islam. Sheikh Ali was
accused of helping the group by allowing Ansar's
guerrillas to take refuge in his areas.
In the first days of the war to remove Saddam, US
cruise missiles hit his two-storey compound, killing
43 of his followers and wounding at least 50. The
Americans apologised later but offered no
compensation.
In July 2003 he arranged to meet US officers at a
hotel in the lakeside resort of Dukan to ask for
compensation but was arrested on his way there.
He was flown to Mosul, where he was told he had been
arrested on four counts: of planning to attack US
forces; of helping Ansar al-Islam; of having links
to the previous Ba'athist regime; and of having
relations with Iran.
"I told them that the charges were baseless and
asked them to produce evidence. They were clearly
clueless about my participation in the resistance to
Saddam, and about my pronouncements against Ansar,"
he said. Sheikh Ali had broadly supported the war to
remove Saddam.
For the first nine days he was interrogated "perhaps
50 times, day or night", after which he was
transferred to the prison containing "high value
detainees".
He said he was tortured but refused to go into
details. "I don't want to explain. That's all. I
will only tell you the consequences of the torture.
When I went to prison my weight was 75kg (165lbs)
but after nine days I had lost 15kg. and my
heartbeat was very quick. I told everything to the
Red Cross."
His prison cell was 2.5 metres by 2.5 metres (8ft by
8ft).
"It had a bed, a blanket, a big strong door, and no
windows. Much of the time there was no electricity,
no lights," he said. "At the beginning I spent 23
hours inside my cell."
After several months, he was allowed out of his cell
for longer periods.
"During the break, we would pace along an open-air
corridor," he said.
"For the first four months we were not even allowed
to say hello to other prisoners; we had to keep our
distance by a few metres from them. If we broke
those rules they would take away our exercise
privileges."
Later the rules were relaxed. "They gave us chairs
so we could sit next to each other and talk to each
other," he said.
He received his first letter seven months after his
arrest but was not allowed a phone call until a year
later.
There were no newspapers. "We got some information
from our guards," he said.
"For example I knew when Saddam arrived. And I used
to see him when he was being taken to the doctor.
The guards told me that he talked big words, but
that he was often depressed."
The Americans gradually began to understand Sheikh
Ali was not a security risk and allowed him to teach
classes in religion to the other inmates.
He described a senior former regime figure who had
broken his arm after falling in the shower, and "was
very down, and needed spiritual sustenance".
Some of those he spoke to denied knowledge of the
regime's campaign against the Kurdish areas in the
late 1980s, during which 180,000 Kurds were killed.
"Some said they did know but it was just a few
villages that had been destroyed." he said.
"One claimed Iraq was not responsible for Halabja
[where 5,000 Kurds were gassed], but that it was the
Iranians."
After six months of interrogation, the American
interrogators were replaced by two Britons. "They
informed me immediately that they knew the
accusations against me were baseless," he said.
"But they also informed me that I would be kept in
prison for as long as the interests of US national
security demanded."
Then one day in April, the director of the prison
stores came to him and told him he would soon "be
travelling".
"It was strange to be told this by the stores
manager and not the interrogation officers. Perhaps
they were somehow ashamed."
The next day he was asked to sign a form, promising
to renounce Ba'athism and not mix with Ba'athists
after his release. He refused. "I told them I'd
prefer to go back to jail than sign this paper," he
said. "It would darken my name. It would be like
accepting that I was a Ba'athist."
Now Sheikh Ali hopes to convince Islamists to
renounce violence. He regards the suicide bombers in
Iraq as being foreigners who are "ignorant" of Iraq
and Islam.
"The Qur'an says it is wrong for even one innocent
Muslim to be killed among 100 guilty people," he
said.
"Killing an innocent policeman or other people who
are just job seekers is not Islamic."
He also hopes to be able to help convince the west
of the mistakes it has made with the Islamic world.
"When I was in prison I tried to tell the Americans
not to always engage the Islamic world through a
process of conflict," he said.
"It's like spring water. You should allow this
spring water to come out from the ground in a
natural way. But if you try to push it and oppress
it, it will take another course and come out of the
ground in a very unnatural way."
www.guardian.co.uk
Top |
® 