Terrorism's Training Grounds

By Zelie Pollon, AlterNet. Posted October 28, 2005.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Yousif Hassen has bloodshot eyes and a too-tight orange jumpsuit. He is sitting in a sterile interrogation room, chain-smoking cigarettes otherwise prohibited, and describing the day when he was arrested by Iraqi officials, then brought to an American detention facility.

"I had just returned from a business trip in Amman and was I driving home from dinner when I was stopped on the street by Iraqi police," said the Jordanian Iraqi and importer of household electronics.

"They told me they were looking for a grey Mercedes. 'But my Mercedes is not grey,' I told them." Then they saw that the lifelong resident of Iraq had a Jordanian passport. Only when he arrived at the Brigade Internment Facility (BIF) run by the Second Brigade 10th Mountain Division did Hassen learn he was suspected of meeting with terrorists and having direct connections to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian terrorist mastermind.

"I was so surprised," he said of the accusations. "I have been threatened by many people because I'm a successful businessman. But Americans are a source of my business; why would I do anything to them?"

"We used to call it DWI: Driving While Iraqi," said Staff Sgt. Michael Nowacki, a military intelligence officer who strongly recommended the prisoner's release after his initial interrogation. Yet Hassen was not released.

Military officials call it a matter of security. Nowacki says it's an example of the arbitrary and dragnet-style arrests by the U.S. military in Iraq -- a style that is more likely to create more terrorists than destroy them.

"I've actually had a commander tell me 'If I arrest 10 people and one of them is bad, then I'm doing my job.' But what about the other nine?" Nowacki said.

"These people are living day to day, and when the men are in prison their family doesn't have any income. ... If there were legal recourse in this country, these kinds of things would never happen."

The 32-year-old, blue-eyed patriot -- a U.S. policeman from the Illinois National Guard -- has become an unlikely advocate for Iraqi victims' rights. He came to Iraq with a fervent desire to protect the flag and a belief that Iraqis were intrinsically bad. "I hated them," he said flatly. "I also had never met one, or ever sat down and talked to one." By the end of his tour Nowacki couldn't stand what he saw. The practices are not only wrong on principal, he said, but also counterproductive to the U.S. mission.

"Arbitrary detentions make the people hate us and want to fight us. If they respect us, they'll be less likely to want to kill us," he said. "I want our mission in Iraq to be successful."

Nowacki, more than most, sees the long and arduous road ahead.

The Brigade Internment Facility (BIF) sits at the outer edge of Camp Victory by the Baghdad Airport, surrounded by barbed wire and dust covered trees. The temporary detention facility held up to 160 detainees around last year's election, but normally has a population between 40-60. They are held in 8-man cells and given a mattress, blanket, slippers, prayer rug and a copy of the Koran. The hallways reek of stale sweat. Nowacki and his team interrogated well over 700 detainees during his tour, averaging about 200 a month.

In the beginning there were big success stories: criminals caught red-handed and caches of weapons exposed. Then began a flood of seemingly innocent civilians who were not released despite his recommendations detailed in intelligence reports. Nowacki began to feel uneasy.

There was the retarded man accused of high-level surveillance activities (Division said retarded people can be used as tools by sophisticated terrorists); the Jordanian businessman accused of being a Zarqawi accomplice (Nowacki said 90% of people with foreign passports are sent to Abu Ghraib despite a lack of corroborating evidence); or the Baghdad University professor who spoke against the U.S. occupation (despite a plea by the University president to the U.S. Embassy, the U.S. had not released the professor, arguing he is anti-coalition).

In all these cases, Nowacki recommended release.

"Let's just say we've busted enough bad guys to be able to tell who's telling the truth, but often they'll [higher officers] go for the informant over military intelligence."

U.S. officials call it a matter of national security.

"It's a tough call and commanders want to err on the side of caution," said Lt. Kristen Boyden, who works with human intelligence sources for the 10th Mountain Division. "We'd rather detain them and possibly step on their supposed civil rights than let them go, and then have them kill a soldier. The worst case [if they're innocent] is they'll spend a couple months in Abu Ghraib."

Zélie Pollon is a US-based freelance journalist and founding member of the Independent Press Association. This was her second trip to Iraq. Visit www.baghdadproject.com.

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