TORTURE

WRMEA: Rape, Torture, Massacres - The Israelis Did It All First

As the story unfolds in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, I find myself recalling Mohammad Salah, a Palestinian born in Jerusalem in 1953 who immigrated to the United States in 1971-and soon decided that America was the land of his dreams. If a man worked hard, he and his family could keep the money they earned. And there seemed to be no limit to what he and his wife, Mariam, and their three sons and daughter could do.

I first wrote about Salah's harrowing story in December 1999, and in the five years that have elapsed since then things have not gone much better for him. Nevertheless, he still has an incurable sense of optimism. When I brought up the torture of prisoners in Iraq, Salah's account of what had happened to him in Israel was an almost word-for-word description of the experience of Iraqi prisioners. He also added a few details that he and I had agreed were too horrific for print in 1999.