Tortured in Iraq, Abu Hassan and his family get help with resettlement

In December of 2003, a few months before photographs revealing torture at Abu Ghraib detention center shocked the world, American soldiers were fired upon in a rural farming community in Iraq. Unable to apprehend the attackers, the Americans went door-to-door, arresting men in neighboring houses. One of these men was Abu Hassan, and the arrest led to nineteen months of imprisonment and torture at US detention camps in Iraq, including Abu Ghraib. 

 The American soldiers interrogated him and his wife, Um Hassan, and searched the house. To this day, their young son, Jamil, remembers that night and has frightening thoughts and dreams about it. “They even checked in the baby’s diaper, and inside pillows,” Um Hassan said. Then they took Abu Hassan away, and his family didn’t see him again for a year and a half.

 While in detention, Abu Hassan met an American soldier who told him, “If someone shoots at us and we can’t find the shooters, we’ll arrest anyone in the area, on the chance that we’ll get someone who was involved.” Abu Hassan calmly explained this strategy: “It is a statistical approach, the best odds. And this way, they can close the file on that incident.” It is worth noting that Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, Commander of the American prison at Abu Ghraib, estimated that 90% of prisoners were innocent.

 When DAI visited Abu Hassan for the first time in Amman, Jordan, he met us at the main road and walked with us up the steep path, over the stones and rubble to his apartment. He welcomed us into his home, and gave us chairs to sit on. Um Hassan brought us tea. Their children sat quietly nearby on the hard, concrete floor. There was almost no furniture in the large, open room that served as both living room and as a bedroom for the children.

 Abu Hassan sat across from us and patiently, with considerable restraint and dignity, told the story of his imprisonment and torture in Iraq. But his primary concern now is for his children. In March, Abu Hassan’s application for resettlement to the United States was denied. “What I wanted to know,” Abu Hassan said, “is whether this refusal by the US would affect the decision of other countries? And they told me it would.” The immigration authorities told him he has no chance of resettlement to any other country.

 “I’ve lost my whole life, “ Abu Hassan says. “I’ve been kept in prison. I have nothing in Iraq now. And here in Jordan, it is also like a prison for Iraqis. We cannot work. We barely survive. But just because I was refused resettlement, just because they took my life away in Iraq, doesn’t mean my children must die.”

 DAI is assisting Abu Hassan and Umm Hassan and their children in a number of ways. We have referred them to a group of US lawyers who are assisting with an appeal of the decision to deny resettlement to the US. DAI is facilitating this process, acting as a go-between, obtaining information and documents for the lawyers, getting forms signed, etc.

 DAI is also assisting the family by visiting them regularly, by bringing furniture, a refrigerator, food, and even a computer for the children to use in doing their schoolwork.

DAI has also connected the family with an organization that works with victims of torture. This organization can provide psychological support as well as other kinds of concrete assistance, including help for one of the children who has serious health issues.

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