IRAQ — One man’s pleasure is another man’s torture. In the case of devout Muslim detainees forced to endure pornography during the so-called “war on terror,” that’s not an exaggeration. A 20-page witness statement from Ahmed Jawad al-Fartoosi, viewed by the Guardian, contains a laundry list of alleged British troop misdeeds directed at Muslims incarcerated in Basra.
Among the injustices said to have been forced upon al-Fartoosi are sleep deprivation, beatings, nearly six months worth of solitary confinement, denial of both food and bathroom privileges – and forced audio presentations of pornographic materials; something that could earn producers of such materials fines and jail time were they to do such a thing within the civilian world.
Al-Fartoosi is no innocent shocked from his cocoon of religiously-inspired naivety. Arrested from his Basra home in September 2005, the Shia militia commander was released last year after a deal was struck between the militia and Iraqi government. Detained more than two years and kept in solitary confinement for almost six months, the man who owes allegiance to radical Shia cleric Moqtada al Sadr insists that the time also including being submerged in a tank while blindfolded and being beaten with the butts of rifles.
Of special distress to al-Fartoosi were the 72 days he spent in solitary confinement within an airless cell. Although he was fed well; three cooked meals a day, he was also serenaded with sounds unseemly for a man of his faith. According to al-Fartoosi’s statement, on the third or fourth night of his lone captivity, a laptop was brought to a window sill of his cell and left to play sexually explicit sounds; something that become a nightly occurrence and threat to his salvation.
“After a short period of conversation in English,” his statement explains, “it became clear tom e that the DVD was showing porn. It was playing at the loudest possible volume. Thereafter, for the next month, the porn movies were played all night.”
Additionally, al-Fartoosi insists that erotic magazines were left in areas where he couldn’t help but catch sight of them, specifically near toilets and sinks.
“It was very humiliating for me to be treated in this way by the British army,” al-Fartoosi’s statement continues. “If they expected me to give in to my basic instincts, they did not realize that I am not that kind of man… I was determined not to be sexually aroused by this, but it made me physically sick.”
When not being bombarded with lascivious imagery and sounds, al-Fartoosi says that his captivity was a confusion of sensory overload and denial. Taken to interrogations with a blanket over his head, he insists he was “spun about for between 15 – 30 minutes to disorient” him and peppered with questions and accusations concerning his alleged crimes, while being told that condemning evidence against him was secret. Released in 2007 and now living in Lebanon, al-Fartoosi has identified a number of British soldiers and is said to have a case for false imprisonment and human rights violations.
Phil Shiner, of Public Interest Lawyers, says that “The use of sensory bombardment and, in particular, the pornographic films to attempt to break down this male Muslim show that the UK were doing exactly the same as the US, using coercive interrogation techniques developed in the 1960s and especially in Northern Ireland, and then refined to fit the so-called ‘war on terror.’”
Although the Ministry of Defense is investigating the allegations, it has not indicated whether or not the pornography in question would be deemed “obscene” within the United States or UK, where religious forces regularly encourage their governments to limit access to erotic materials or ban them altogether.
