The Disappeared of Iraq

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The interrogators ordered him to strip to his underpants and gave him a brown dishdasha, the traditional Arabic robe, which he wore for the rest of his captivity. He was then taken down two more flights of stairs to a basement holding area that was partitioned with plywood into many small cells--at least 10, possibly more. His home for the next five weeks would be a dirty cell, 5 ft. by 4 ft., with a rough concrete floor. The plywood walls were unpainted and still bore the manufacturer's stamp in a foreign script he speculates was Korean. The walls didn't go all the way up to the ceiling, and that allowed for some air circulation. He was given a large, smelly quilt that had to serve as a mattress as well as protection from the cold. From time to time, he heard other captives being taken out of their cells and up the stairs to the interrogation room. They remained there for hours, and Waddah heard screaming and sobbing. A few times, he heard the sound of gunfire--single shots, followed by silence.

His turn in the interrogation room came every other day. The questions never varied. "They kept coming back to the phone number--why I didn't have any," he says. "They just wouldn't believe me." Every session would end with threats of more beatings and torture. He was told of other captives who had died grisly deaths and was shown stains on the floor where they had bled. The strong smell of chemicals began to make sense. They had been used to cover up the smell of vomit and dried blood. But, says the U.S. official, the threat of death was probably no more than just that. "They were already invested in this guy, having paid the people who snatched him," he says. "They would not kill him if there was even a remote chance of making some money off of him."

The captives were fed twice a day: chopped raw vegetables like tomatoes, cucumbers and onions, wrapped in flat, unleavened bread. Sometimes, a spoonful of hummus was added to the vegetables. A 2-liter plastic jug was in his cell on the first day; when it ran out, Waddah would knock on his door and ask the guard for a refill. Once a day, the captives were taken to the toilet in groups of five. Their hands bound behind them, they would queue up at a tap just outside the toilet. One by one, the captives were untied, and they filled a red plastic bucket with water and went in. The others would wait, still fettered, while a guard armed with an old AK-47 watched them carefully.