Former Abu Ghraib detainees say time has not fully healed the physical and mental pain they suffered at the infamous US prison. Iraqis spoke with RT on the 15th anniversary of the US-led invasion of their country.
“The time I spent in that prison felt like a lifetime. An hour of that pain, humiliation, and injustice stays with you forever,” Anwer Al-Sudani, a former Abu Ghraib detainee, told RT.
Once used by Saddam Hussein to lock up political dissidents, Abu Ghraib prison was converted into a US Army detention facility shortly after the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
In April 2004, photographs showing prisoners being subjected to torture, sexual humiliation, rape, and other forms of abuse at the hands of US soldiers were leaked to the press.
The facility, located about 20 miles west of Baghdad, held as many as 3,800 detainees at the height of its use by the US military. In 2006, all remaining detainees at Abu Ghraib were transferred to other prisons, and the facility was handed over to the Iraqi government. More than a decade has passed since the US relinquished control of the infamous prison, but former inmates say the physical and mental scars from their time at the facility have not yet healed.
“I still have nightmares and suffer physical and mental pain, as if it all happened yesterday,” Ali Al Qasi, a former inmate at the prison, told RT.
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