February 21, 2006
Assaf Hunaihin Salih al-Jumeili is a well-dressed man with a serious
face and very sad eyes. We met at the Cairo Tribunal on Bush, Blair and
Sharon; he had been looking my way trying to catch my eye, but focused
on the proceedings and assuming he was looking for someone else, at
first I didn’t respond. At a break, he motioned me over as I walked by
and, puzzled, I sat down next to him. On his lap were several folded
papers sitting atop a Koran. Opening the papers, he shows me a letter to
the International Red Cross in Egypt he’d written on behalf of his only
son, Aysser Assaf, who disappeared at the beginning of April 2003.
Umm Qasr is a port town, which sits on the border of Kuwait in southern
Iraq. In the nearby desert, American forces set up the now notorious
Bucca Camp where several US soldiers were accused of abusing prisoners
as early as May 2003 (long before the Abu Ghraib revelations), and where
frustrated US military personnel regularly complained, all the way up to
Rumsfeld, about the lack of facilities, training and leadership.
Named after a New York firefighter and Army Reservist who died in the
World Trade Center, Camp Bucca was originally set up as a temporary
prisoner-of-war camp and was closed by December 2003. The military later
re-opened it to accommodate overflow from Abu Ghraib. There are no
accurate figures on how many are being detained in Iraq, but it is
believed to be tens of thousands.
Between 7,000 and 8,000 prisoners were once held at the Camp Bucca
alone; it is believed the number now stands between 5,000 and 6,000.
After his son’s disappearance, Assaf Hunaihin traveled to the closest
prison facility, as many families do when a relative disappears, and
found his son’s name on a list maintained by the International Committee
of the Red Cross (ICRC) of Bucca detainees.
"That was April 3, 2003 and that’s the last we ever knew. My son can’t
be located. I’ve written to everyone I was told to." Hoping to would
find his son in another detention camp, Assaf tirelessly followed every
lead he got.
"I went to the ICRC offices in Basrah seven times, to Nasriyeh three
times and I even visited their offices in Baghdad nine times before it
was bombed and closed. I went to the US CMCC [Civil-Military
Coordination Center] office in Baghdad and filled out the forms they
asked me to, and also to the Baghdad Airport prison and Abu Ghraib. I’ve
heard no response from any of them."
Assaf, an attorney, was eventually approached by the families of two
other young men who were detained at the same time, Muiah Rashid Resn
and Yasser Hamid Ahmed, to represent them as well.
"I was told that maybe my son had been taken to one of the secret US
prisons in Jordan, Kuwait or United Arab Emirates…that he was probably
no longer in Iraq." Assaf and his wife and moved from Basrah to Baghdad
because of the offices located there, which they hoped could help.
"Even though I have a number that was assigned to him by the Americans,
no one can find him," Assaf laments. "We don’t know if he’s been charged
with anything, we don’t know anything, for three years now!"
Unfortunately, it’s an all too common story. Last year the International
Red Cross reported that the US holds 70 – 90 percent of Iraqi detainees
without cause. This doesn’t even take in to account the numbers who’ve
disappeared in Iraqi government prisons.
"The families planned a delegation of lawyers to go outside Iraq and
raise this issue of prisoners. Of course, we went to the Iraqi Bar
Association for official representation; they, in turn, asked the new
government for their permission."
Instead, the US-backed Iraqi government dissolved the Bar Association,
which had maintained its pre-invasion leadership. When asked if he
thinks there was any correlation, Assaf shrugs his shoulders, "We don’t
know these things. The Union of International Lawyers is supposed to
supervise new elections on March 16. But of course, the government
doesn’t agree with anything that doesn’t speak in their voice."
"Now, I am my own delegation," he explains. "This is why I came all the
way to Cairo when I heard about the trial.
"First, I am a father, and if there was one chance in a million that I
could meet someone who can help me, it’s worth it. My son’s wife and
mother told me, 'We need to know, is he dead or alive. If he’s dead, we
just want to know so that we can at least mourn him!"
My eyes fall to the bottom of Assaf’s letter to the International
Committee to the Red Cross where he’s written,
I, as a father, a very broken-heart I beg you to help me to know my
son’s destiny and ask you to allow me to see him according to Geneva
Treaty about the captives.
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