Reporter Detained in Kut

Three days ago I was out on a reporting assignment in Kut, which lies to the southeast of Baghdad. I was standing watching some Iraqi National Guards at the al-Sada crossroads in the city centre, and I asked one of them whether I could take a picture of him standing in front of an election poster.

The soldier went to his lieutenant for permission, and duly got it. When he returned, I took the picture.

But at this point, another officer - a first lieutenant - got out of his military jeep, arrested me and took me away to the local National Guard headquarters.

A major there ordered me to be put me in jail.

I protested as politely as I could, “Excuse me, I just want to talk to you.”

His response? “Don’t make me slap you and knock you down.”

I was put in jail at midday on January 24, after the National Guards had taken everything I had with me, including my mobile and satellite phones.

The jail was terrible - very dirty and foul smelling.

The cell walls bore graffiti left by previous inmates. “Freedom is a treasure: it does not disappear, yet where is it?” read one of the messages.

I stayed in the cell until about five that evening. It was so stuffy I thought I would suffocate, and I wondered whether I could try squeezing through the window to get away.

In desperation I shouted, “Please let me out!”

In about three minutes, the guards opened the door and ordered me to face the wall. They handcuffed and blindfolded me, and took me off to a room where they took a picture of me.

After that they led me to another room, where they removed the black nylon blindfold.

Standing there was the same officer who had originally arrested me, and I knew then that he was from military intelligence.

He first asked me why I'd come to Kut.

I told him I was a journalist and asked him to contact the organisation I work for.

But he rebuffed the idea, asking instead, “Why were you in Tikrit the day before that?”

I was really shocked that he should know this. Later I was to realise that he'd found this out from a confiscated floppy disk containing the reports and stories I'd written.

The intelligence officer was not convinced, and said he would be transferring me and my documents to the counter-terrorism department at seven the same evening

His men took me back to my cell. After a while they put another guy in with me. It was kind of a relief to have some company.

My new cellmate was a 22-year-old called Ali Kazim. I asked him why he'd been picked up, and he replied, “I was arrested riding my bike in the al-Zubat neighbourhood.”

Half an hour later, the soldiers came and took Ali away for interrogation. After an hour he came back, crying and shouting.

“I was tortured, kicked and punched,” he told me.

He cried all night long.

The room was very cold and I did some exercises just to warm up, but even that was useless and I began to feel ill.

The next morning, we were left in the cell. Soldiers brought in two more guys they had detained in the city centre.

Both were from Baghdad, and had come to Kut to track down their stolen car. They'd even got permission from the Iraqi interior ministry to do so, but the National Guard didn’t believe them. To them, we were all terrorists.

At three in the afternoon of my second day in incarceration, they handcuffed and blindfolded me again, and sent me to the Department for the Eradication of Terrorism.

Once I got there, things seemed to change. An officer told his men to prepare a warm room for me so I could take a rest, and not to put me in a cell again. I was able to get some rest, and the same officer then told me that I would be spending the night there and the next day he would accompany me to court. He said I would then be released.

The next morning, a policeman came in and gave me some medicine, and I ate breakfast together with staff from the anti-terrorism department.

I was then taken to a court, where the judge smiled and told me that there was no problem, and that I wasn't accused of any crime. He ordered my release.

The judge also asked whether I'd had anything stolen from me and I said yes – my computer disk, notebook and pens.

“We are sorry we jailed you for three days," he said. "I hope you'll accept our apology.”

Ziyad al-Ujaily is an IWPR trainee journalist in Iraq.