Former Iraqi prisoners allege torture by US troops

Two former Iraqi detainees said in an exclusive interview with ABC News that they were repeatedly tortured by US forces seeking information about Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction. Thahee Sabbar and Sherzad Khalid are two of eight men who, with help from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the group Human Rights First, are suing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The men claim they were tortured for months, in violation of the US Constitution and international law. Khalid–a 34-year-old married father of four children–said he worked in the grocery business until July 17, 2003, when US soldiers interrupted a business meeting he was having with Thahee Sabbar, who sold sugar and bananas. US soldiers, they said, interrupted their meeting and arrested them. Khalid said US soldiers tied his hands behind his back, put a hood over his head, and beat him to the point of breaking his teeth and bloodying his nose. He said that US soldiers at one point threatened him with live lions. "They took us to a cage–an animal cage that had lions in it within the Republican Palace," he said. "And they threatened us that if we did not confess, they would put us inside the cage with the lions in it." Inside the Republican Palace–the site of Saddam's former office–Sabbar also said troops taunted him with a mock execution. After a night in jail at the Republican Palace, Khalid said he was taken to the prison at the Baghdad airport where the torture continued. He refused to talk about one other allegation. In his legal complaint, he holds US soldiers responsible for "sexually assaulting and humiliating [him]... by grabbing his buttocks and simulating anal rape by pressing a water bottle against the seat of his pants; putting a hand inside [his]... pants and grabbing his buttocks during a severe beating... [and] brandishing a long wooden pole and threatening to sodomize him on the spot every night of his detention." According to Sabbar, US soldiers used Taser guns and rubber bullets to control detainees. "They had another kind of torture using electrical shocks, pointing a hand gun towards you that shocks you and causes you to lose consciousness for a while," he said. "That was one of the methods at the airport [jail]. Or [they] use[d] rubber bullets that end up hurting or burning the area where it hits you, and very painful ones." Sabbar ended up at Abu Ghraib, the detention center where the abuse of detainees was captured in the now-infamous photographs that shocked the world. However, he was not held inside one of the cell blocks, but rather outside in a courtyard. Khalid–who says he still suffers severe back pain–was released in September 2003; Sabbar in January 2004. As is the case with many detainees, no charges were filed against them. Both the Pentagon and the Justice Department acknowledged the two men were prisoners but refused to comment on their allegations. Human Rights First and the ACLU–the groups bringing the lawsuit on their behalf–allege such torture was part of the Pentagon playbook. "They were basically told that this was a different type of war, and the rules didn't apply anymore," said ACLU executive director Anthony Romero.