Sabah Hassan Hussein, who says she suffered physical and psychological abuse and sexual assault in jail after investigating prison conditions. Photograph: Peter Beaumont

March 17, 2013

Wives of suspects are held as 'hostages', while others are jailed over family grudges or on specious charges to extract bribes

Sabah Hassan Hussein is still not certain which powerful person or interest she offended. An Iraqi journalist and human rights activist, she says she had been investigating the serious abuse of female prisoners in Tikrit. Although she had not published her allegations she did raise them with Iraqi ministries.

Last year, in events she believes may be connected, Hussein found herself incarcerated in the same jail and suffering similar abuse to the other women.

Tricked into visiting an army barracks in Baghdad, she was arrested and transferred to Tikrit on a trumped-up charge involving the murder of the brother of an Iraqi MP and one of her colleagues who had been kidnapped and killed.

The 12-month ordeal that followed, by her account, involved physical and psychological abuse, and included sexual assault.

She says she finally cracked when she was told her 20-year-old daughter, who was brought to speak to her in Tikrit, would be raped if she did not "confess".

At one point a judge accused Hussein of a completely different crime – of delivering suicide vests for an attack on a government building, a capital offence.

Hussein, who leaves her hair uncovered, smokes cigarettes and wears trousers, is still incredulous. "I said to the final judge I saw in Baghdad, look at me. Do I look like someone from al-Qaida?"

Her case is not unique in a country where both physical and procedural mistreatment of prisoners is commonplace.

Women, however, are doubly vulnerable. According to international and local human rights organisations, women have been detained without charge as "hostages" to persuade husbands wanted in serious crimes to surrender.

In other cases women have fallen victim to grudges launched by vengeful family members, including husbands. There have been allegations of rape, violence and other serious assaults.

Vivian al-Tai is one of those who claims she was jailed because of a marital dispute. Her husband lodged a complaint after she sought a divorce because of allegations of domestic violence. He accused her of kidnapping him and forcing him to marry her, according to her aunt, Lubna Ismail. He is thought to be willing to drop the case if his wife withdraws charges of assault and her claim for alimony.

There is a final category of female prisoners: those who are arrested and in effect held hostage to force male relatives suspected of terrorism to give themselves up.

This tactic has become one of the complaints of Sunni protesters in the country's northern and western provinces.

Even then the real reasons for holding the women can be specious. Three months ago Human Rights Watch reported claims of families saying security officers and judges had collaborated to keep women detained on "suspicion of terrorism" charges, then demanded bribes to secure their release.

In the same report HRW gave details of one of the most notorious recent cases. In November federal police raided 11 homes in the town of al-Taji, north of Baghdad, and detained 41 people, including 29 children, overnight in their homes.

The report stated: "Sources close to the detainees, who requested anonymity, said police took 12 women and girls, ages 11 to 60, to 6th brigade headquarters and held them there for four days without charge.

"The sources said the police beat the women and tortured them with electric shocks, and plastic bags placed over their heads until they began to suffocate."

Those claims appear consistent with allegations made in September to representatives of the Iraqi government's human rights ministry and to the Hummurabi Human Rights Organisation, an Iraqi NGO, during a visit to women's prison 42 in Baghdad's Al-Resafa district. In this jail female inmates reported that they had suffered torture and sexual abuse.

In Iraq's parliament Atab Jasim Nasif al-Duri, a female MP, raised the issue of the security forces' practice of detaining the wives or other female relatives of wanted suspects.

A week later, according to a report by Amnesty International, the head of the parliamentary human rights committee expressed concern that female detainees were liable to harassment and abuse when put in the custody of solely male guards while being moved between detention facilities.

While that led to the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, issuing pardons in January for a few female detainees, human rights activists believe hundreds more women remain in detention.

Mohammed Hassan al-Salami, of the National Assembly for the Defence of Human Rights, argues that Iraq's draconian anti-terrorism legislation has created a culture of impunity in the country's judicial, policing and judicial system, which has made life easy for unscrupulous individuals who are motivated by either corruption or by sectarian antipathy.

The legislation includes the 2005 article 4 which, critics argue, in effect holds other family members culpable for the crimes of those accused of terror.

Salami said: "One of the issues is the power given to security forces to do what they want to defeat terrorism, which is then used for personal advantage. The rule in these places where women are being detained is that these officers are above ordinary citizens.

"Sadly many people who are victims of abuse are afraid to speak out in public because they are afraid they will be paid back.

"Some of these women are victims of personal vendettas. Someone hates them and uses the system against them. In these cases we see fake cases and fake warrants. In other cases it is because of political views, designed to shut them up."

Hussein was released last month with all charges dropped. But her ordeal is not over. She doesn't go out much and is too afraid to return to work.



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