On July 2, 1999, a young theology student in his late twenties named al-Shaikh Yahya returned home to find that his father and two brothers had been detained as substitute prisoners until Saddam's secret police could arrest him. Al-Shaikh Yahya was suspected of being a supporter of a prominent Shi'a cleric whose murder had set off protests six months before. The protests had been brutally suppressed by the regime's security forces but the subsequent crackdown continued.

Seeing no other option, al-Shaikh Yahya submitted, was arrested and blindfolded and taken to the Saddam Security Directorate building "for questioning." After being forced to watch one of his friends being tortured, the security officials took him to another room where he awaited his own torture. His recount of what happened next is chilling:

They stripped me of my clothes and a security officer said, "The person you saw has confessed against you." He said to me, "You followers of [Ayatollah] al-Sadr have carried out acts harmful to the security of the country and have been distributing anti-government statements coming from abroad." He asked if I have any contact with an Iraqi religious scholar based in Iran who has been signing these statements. I said, "I do not have any contacts with him."...I was then left suspended [naked and handcuffed, with a board between my elbows and knees on two high chairs]....My face was looking upward. They attached an electric wire on my penis and the other end of the wire is attached to an electric motor. One security man was hitting my feet with a cable. Electric shocks were applied every few minutes and were increased. I must have been suspended for more than an hour. I lost consciousness....They repeated this method [of torture] a few times.

Al-Shaikh Yahya was regularly subjected to electric shocks and beating on his feet. For two months of his detention, he slept on the floor with his hands tied behind his back and his face on the floor. According to his testimony, this was more unbearable than the electric shocks. He was also suspended from a window non-stop for three days once, and at one point during this suspension, had a heavy weight attached to his genitals.

Five months later, al-Shaikh Yahya and 21 other detainees were transferred to a separate detention center also in Baghdad. He was detained without charge or trial for another four months, until April 14, 2000, when he was released.

Al-Shaikh Yahya's experience was not an isolated event, but just one example of how Saddam Hussein and his regime have systematically abused Iraqis in order to silence their beliefs.

"Traitors" Are Silenced »