Ex-Detainee Speaks

Ex-Detainee Tells of Anguishing Treatment at Iraq Prison

Hasham Mohsen Lazim traded used tires for a living in the Shiite slum of Sadr City. He had been in trouble only once in his life, he said, a desperate time six years ago when he deserted Saddam Hussein's army to support his wife and four small children.

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"Something awful happened to me," Lazim said during a two-hour interview broken by long pauses of silent despair. "I will never forget it until the day I die."

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Lazim said he was arrested last August after a taxi, in which he and a neighbor were riding, broke down on Canal Street in Baghdad, just a few blocks from the off-ramp that would have taken them home. U.S. soldiers approached and searched the taxi. In the trunk, they discovered a pistol and other weapons that Lazim said he could not see.

Soldiers placed hoods and handcuffs on the men, then took them to a former cigarette factory being used as a military base.

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Still hooded, Lazim was then inspected by the U.S. soldier, who opened Lazim's shirt and examined his arms. Lazim said the soldier was looking for the telltale tattoo of an eagle worn by members of Saddam's Fedayeen, a militia loyal to Hussein. He found instead a tattoo that said: "I Love You Mom." But Lazim said the soldier kept asking him: "Why were you trying to shoot Americans?"

"I said I wasn't, that the taxi driver had already said the guns were his," Lazim said. "And no one was shooting at Americans. At the time, we liked them."

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