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• Monday, December 1, 2008 09:12 AM

  Graner has left the building, but the atrocities linger on...

  Inside Baghdad's Rusafa prison

  It took some time to make sense of the scene in front of us.

  A jailer at Baghdad's Rusafa prison had just swung open the heavy metal-barred door.

  Inside a small dimly lit room, the first sight was the iron-framed double bunks, packed together and hung with plastic bags, clothes and towels.

  Then, staring back at us from the bunks, faces and faces, bearded, unshaven, balding, greying. And then into a larger room and in almost every conceivable space there was a human being.

  Four or five men perched on a bunk, some even tucked on the floor underneath.

  It was astonishing to see so many people packed into one space. It's the first time the foreign media have had such access to an Iraqi jail since the US invasion in 2003.

  They were nervous at first, at seeing their jailers at the door behind us and no doubt at seeing foreign journalists suddenly appear in their midst. Everything is fine here, was the first thing they said.

  But then a man in a long white robe or dish-dash jumped down from a bunk.

  "Don't listen to that," he said. "The conditions are terrible here. There are people sleeping next to the toilets. Some stand so that others can sleep."

  Prisoners say some have to stand to make room for others to sleep

  Another man, sitting on a top bunk said: "I feel like I'm dead in here."

  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7748016.stm

  It's okay though, they are "enemies" who are "evil" and "bad". They are the other.

  It's funny that the authour was "astonished" at the conditions. The conditions of this prison would not be unfamiliar to another torturer, Sheriff Joe Arpio...

  Brian Crenshaw, a blind man, was serving six months for shoplifting.

  His mother Linda Evans learned he had been in some sort of scuffle with officers at Tent City before he was transferred and placed in solitary confinement at Madison Street Jail.

  Six days later Crenshaw was taken to the hospital after being found unconscious in his cell. However, Crenshaw had already told a prison doctor he'd been beaten by officers. He died one month later and the family is suing.

  Evans says, "They murdered my son. Mr. Arpaio is responsible. He is the head of the sheriff's department and yet he seems to thrive on this cruelty and this mentality that these men are nothing."

  The sheriff insists Crenshaw fell off a bunk. Even though medical evidence indicates otherwise, it's Arpaio's story and he's sticking to it.

  Arpaio said, "Well, a lot of people in jail say certain comments that are not true. So, if you want to believe a few of these inmates ... so be it."

  http://www.november.org/stayinfo/breaking3/SheriffJoeBBC.html

  This whole issue of torture is much bigger than Graner, it's bigger than Bush, it's the system. It's usual. Just ask Sheriff Joe.

  —Bill Owen Read Bill Owen's other letters
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