Recommended reading.
“ What happened to you when you refused?
“I was arrested in December 1979. I was interrogated and tortured
for 22 days and nights. In my case they were gentler because they did
not want to leave any permanent bodily marks on me. They hung me from
the ceiling by my hands, which were tied behind my back. They used electric
probes on sensitive parts of my body and beat me. There were others
in the torture chambers who were treated far worse. In one case I witnessed
a guy having holes drilled into his bones with electric drills. The
most painful thing in those torture chambers was to hear the screams
of children being tortured to extract confessions from their fathers.
“What did they do with you then?
“I was sentenced to life imprisonment and taken to Abu Ghraib
prison near Baghdad. I was visited by Saddam's step-brother, who came
to my cell and expressed his disappointment in what they had done to
me, and tried to persuade me to go back to my work. He told me there
was a place for me at the presidential palace. I said I was not in a
position to do so, both physically because I was half-paralysed after
being tortured, and also because weapons research was not my speciality.
Then he said that any man who was not willing to serve his country did
not deserve to be alive. I said that it was our duty to serve our country,
but that this was one service I could not do. At this point I was ordered
to solitary confinement for 10 years. I was there from May 1980 to May
1990, on Saddam's personal orders.”
the world of fundamentalism archives
