BAGHDAD — His pictures have been flashed all over the world.
Naked and hooded, Haider Sabber Abd has been subjected to unspeakable abuse at the hands of U.S. prison guards and has unwittingly become the focus of one of the largest scandals to hit the American military in a generation.
"I never thought American people could do something of this nature," Sabber said Wednesday in an interview, after detailing the torture and simulated sodomy that he said his U.S. guards imposed upon him.
Sabber, 36, comes from a Shiite Muslim family with a long history of opposition to the ousted regime of Saddam Hussein. He bears a dent-like scar on his right cheek: A Hussein lieutenant sliced him eight years ago as punishment for his cousin's attempt to assassinate the former dictator's son Uday.
Sabber cheered when the U.S. Army marched through his hometown of Nasiriya a little more than a year ago. He quickly shed his Iraqi army uniform ("I spent most of my military career deserting") and looked with hope to a free future. That he should become Exhibit A in the case against U.S. abuse of Iraqis is one of the many painful ironies of the scandal.
It was when the night shift came on duty that terrible things happened to Sabber and six other Iraqis kept in solitary confinement cells at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad during a brief period last fall.
By night, the American guards would strip the detainees naked, cuff their arms at odd angles to bedposts or doorjambs, and deny them food, Sabber said. By day, another crew gave them clothes, medical attention, two meals and fresh blankets.
The most severe abuse happened one night. As the infamous photographs attest and Sabber recounted, he and the other men were forced to strike poses in the nude, masturbate, simulate sodomy and endure beatings and ridicule -- all while one female soldier snapped a camera. Sabber estimated that the soldier took 60 photos.
The sexual abuse by members of the Army Reserve's 800th Military Police Brigade has served to reveal a wider pattern of mistreatment, human rights violations and breaches of international law throughout the U.S.-run wartime prison system in Iraq. The scandal has shaken the U.S. military, reverberated through Washington and enraged the Arab world.
The abuse so graphically captured in the photographs was, at least for Sabber, an isolated case; he says he was otherwise treated well in nearly nine months of imprisonment. Yet one night of sadistic behavior -- designed, it seems, more to punish than to extract intelligence -- has opened a window on more widespread abuse.
Sabber, married with five children, and Hashim Muhsin, another of the men pictured in the photos, agreed to talk about their ordeal.
Coming forward takes courage in Iraq because of the shame attached to being photographed nude and in compromising positions, especially with women. It would be embarrassing anywhere, perhaps, but it is considered enormously humiliating in this tradition-bound and paternalistic society.
In the photo of the hooded Iraqis forming a human pyramid, Sabber said, he was on the ground on the far left. In another photo, he was the hooded man whose genitalia was pointed to by a cigarette-chomping female soldier giving the thumbs-up sign.
He identified himself because he remembered the positions they forced him into that night, and occasionally they lifted his hood, which enabled him to memorize the scene.
How Sabber got to that point was a sad, hapless journey.
He said he hired a car to Baghdad last July to retrieve identification papers that would help him collect a salary. But the driver had no documents to prove that he owned the car, and when they passed through an American checkpoint near Baghdad, they were stopped. Authorities were cracking down on car thieves. Sabber and the driver were arrested.
Sabber said he was never suspected of insurgent activities, and it seemed he was regarded more as a common criminal. He was never hooded and rarely shackled -- treatment reserved for so-called political prisoners or anyone who might be linked to anti-American resistance.
In Abu Ghraib, where Sabber ended up after months in other prisons, ethnic tensions were apparently strong but ignored by U.S. officials. Sabber and six other Iraqis -- all Shiites -- fought with another prisoner from a prominent Sunni Muslim family.
The inmate's father was a leading official from Hussein's Baath Party who allegedly massacred hundreds of Shiites and dumped them in mass graves.
Sabber and the other Shiite prisoners believed that the Sunni scion, who spoke English well and was strapping and attractive, was being favored by the head of the prison. When the Shiite prisoners made fun of him and a fight broke out in November, it was the Shiites who were punished.
