One of Ours

The shame is so deep that Hayder Sabbar Abd says he feels that he cannot move back to his old neighborhood...But now the entire world has seen the pictures, which Mr. Abd looked at yet again on Tuesday, pointing out the key figures, starting with three American soldiers wearing big smiles for the camera.

"That is Joiner," he said, pointing to one male soldier in glasses, a black hat and blue rubber gloves. His arms were crossed over a stack of naked and hooded Iraqi prisoners.

"That is Miss Maya," he said, pointing to a young woman's fresh face poking up over the same pile.

He gazed down at another picture. In it, a second female soldier flashed a "thumbs up" and pointed with her other hand at the genitals of a man wearing nothing but a black hood, his fingers laced on top of his head. He did not know her name. But the small scars on the torso left little doubt about the identity of the naked prisoner.

"That is me," he said, and he tapped his own hooded, slightly hunched image.

Mr. Abd, 34, is at the center of an explosive scandal over American mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners, but he remained calm in a detailed, two-hour account of his time at the fearsome Abu Ghraib prison...

...Mr. Abd spoke with no particular anger at the American occupation, though he has seen it closer than most Iraqis. In six months in prisons run by American soldiers, in fact, he said most of them had treated him well and with respect.

"Most of the time, they wouldn't even say, `Shut up,' " he said.

That changed in November — he does not know the exact date — when punishment for a prisoner fight at Abu Ghraib degenerated into torture. That night, he said, he and six other inmates were beaten, stripped naked (a particularly deep humiliation in the Arab world), forced to pile on top of one another, to straddle one another's backs naked, to simulate oral sex...

... a military official here said the prisoner number that Mr. Abd gave, 13077, matched that of a former prisoner who submitted a sworn statement alleging abuse by American soldiers. He also said the man's account was consistent with those verified by a military investigator. Several episodes that Mr. Abd recounted also matched, in some detail, testimony given by other American soldiers horrified by what they saw...

...He was arrested in June at a military checkpoint, when he tried to leave the taxi he was riding in. He was taken to a detention center at the Baghdad airport, he said, and then transferred to a big military prison in Um Qasr, near the Kuwaiti border. He said he had stayed for three months and four days.

The treatment in Um Qasr, he said, "was very good," adding: "There was no problem. The American guards were nice and good people."

After the three months, he said, he was transferred to Abu Ghraib...

...Mr. Abd said he and the other men had been handcuffed and taken inside the prison to a cellblock called "the hard site," reserved for the most dangerous prisoners. There he saw, for the first time, an American soldier called "Joiner or something." (Mr. Abd does not speak English. The man he pointed out in the picture as Joiner has been identified in other reports as Specialist Charles A. Granier, of the 372nd Military Police Company.)...

...The seven men were all placed in hoods, he said, and the beating began. "They beat our heads on the walls and the doors," he said. "I don't really know: I couldn't see." He said his jaw had been broken, badly enough that he still has trouble eating. In all, he said, he believes that he received about 50 blows over about two hours.

"Then the interpreter told us to strip," he said. "We told him: `You are Egyptian, and you are a Muslim. You know that as Muslims we can't do that.' When we refused to take off our clothes, they beat us and tore our clothes off with a blade."...

...after an ordeal of what Mr. Abd believed to be about four hours, it was over...

...But the next morning, he said, doctors and dentists arrived to care for their injuries. Beds and pillows were brought back in. They were fed. Everyone was nice, Mr. Abd said. Then at night, the same crew with "Joiner" would return and strip them and handcuff them to the walls...

...About 10 days after it started, the nightly abuse ended, for no explained reason. "Joiner" just stopped coming to the cell block, and about a month later, Mr. Abd and two others among the seven were transferred to a civilian Iraqi prison in Baghdad.

Two weeks or so after that, an American military investigator came to visit him. He showed Mr. Abd the pictures and said he needed him to make a statement against the military police who had mistreated him. Mr. Abd trusted him.

"He said, `Don't be afraid. Tell us what happened. We are on your side,' " Mr. Abd remembered. " `Tell us everything they have done.' "

Mr. Abd was released in mid-April. Looking back, the only explanation he can imagine for the mistreatment is that "Joiner" had been drinking.

"Americans did not mistreat me in general," he said. "But these people must be tried."

"I can't tell you my feelings," he said. "The Americans got rid of Saddam Hussein. They told us about democracy and freedom. We are happy about that."

But then he tapped the photos again.

"Then this man did this to the seven of us," he said. "I am asking: Is that democracy? Is that freedom?"

On Tuesday, he said, he would travel, finally, with his family back to his home in Nasiriya, though he said he could not stay. He said he would be too ashamed. He wants the American government to pay compensation. He said he felt he needed to move out of Iraq, and despite it all, he said he would not refuse an offer to move to America.