Threads Unravel in Iraqi's Tale

[Tinoire]

washingtonpost.com
Threads Unravel in Iraqi's Tale
Relatives, Others Dispute Account of Refugee Who Accused Officials of Abuse
By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, January 20, 2005; Page A18

An Iraqi woman who was granted refugee status in the United States after telling The Washington Post and U.S. officials that she had been imprisoned, tortured and sexually assaulted in Iraq during the 1990s appears to have made false claims about her past, according to a fresh examination of her statements.

(snip)

Jumana Michael Hanna also claimed her husband, Haitam Jamil Anwar, had been executed during the rule of ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. Her testimony led to the arrest of several Iraqi security officials. Based on her testimony, U.S. officials took her into protective custody in Baghdad, and then to the United States.

She was the subject of a lengthy article in The Washington Post in July 2003. Later, a writer who was interested in collaborating on a book about Hanna concluded that she was not telling the truth. Her article appears in the January issue of Esquire magazine.

(snip)

After she was taken into U.S. protective custody in 2003, Hanna identified a number of Iraqis, including a brigadier general, as among those who participated in torture at the jail. Based on her testimony, a number of Iraqis were subsequently arrested by U.S. and Iraqi security forces. They were all released after Hanna was flown to the United States and the case languished, officials said.

(snip)

Hanna told Solovitch, for instance, that she attended Oxford University in Britain, although she could speak very little English; she had told The Post that she had taken business courses in Baghdad. She told Esquire that she had a bizarre, direct encounter with Uday Hussein, although she had told The Post that she never saw or heard him. She also told Esquire that other female prisoners were killed in a gruesome fashion. In interviews with The Post, she spoke of beatings and rapes of female prisoners, but not of killings.

(snip)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22249-2005Jan19?language=printer

Posting mostly for the historical record...

[MrPrax]

1. Here's the Esquire link...

A truly great piece of writing

...quite astounding and worth the read (it's quite long...maybe buy a copy of the current Esquire)

[Tinoire]

3. Thanks! Makes you wonder where the rape stories came from

You know the Uday rape torture garbage that littered our airwaves.

I'll buy it. Thanks :)

[NVMojo]

2. Wow ........

:wow:

[NYC]

4. Was she coached by Hill & Knowlton?

Just wondering.

[BrotherBuzz]

6. I bet they scripted it...

but I suspect they farmed out the actual coaching to one of Chalabi's stooges because of the language barrier.

[progressivebydesign]

8. Like the babies out of the incubators story to kick off the first war.

That turned to be PR bullshit, too. Amazing how much of OUR tax money goes to the blood thirsty PR agencies that promote this shit. But the republicans are whining about people on welfare.. while they're being screwed to the tune of BILLIONS by Bush and his pals.

[BrotherBuzz]

9. What's amazing is that the propaganda works so well.....

but the truly bizarre part is when the fraud is exposed, we don't hear any outrage from Joe Six-pack, not a peep. WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE!

[frictionlessO]

13. Tell me about it! Most people still think Gulf war 1 was a "good" war

... Its all right there folks, just follow the coincidences and when you get to a big number like 253, maybe just maybe your pollyanna rose colored glasses will drop and the veil will lift.

or at least one can always hope.....

[daleo]

5. No surprise here, I always expected lots of these stories were lies.

I always had my doubts about the "Hussien/Uday/Quesay/etc. is a monster" stories. This doesn't necessarily mean they were boy scouts, though. As we now know, ruling a fractious country like Iraq isn't a tea party. The real lurid propaganda is generally false, but it plays well with the rubes. You know the war party is on the move when you hear these lurid tales. It was ever thus.

[progressivebydesign]

7. You mean parading Saddam's dead sons in a gruesome fashion was a boo-boo?

My fucking head is about to explode. Regardless of what people think of the Saddam regime, regardless of all that happened in Iraq before we shock and awed it all to hell... I STILL think what the US did to Saddam's sons was a GROSS violation of Geneva Convetions and International laws. Then everyone was so shocked at what the inurgents did to the mercenaries... We did it first.

Bush is a sick, sick, man. He personally ordered the parade of the dead sons; I'm certain of it.

[LynnTheDem]

10. A female CHALABI.

Liar pulling a con.

And of course the warmongering Americans fell for it.

I just wonder when I'll get an apology from the warmongering bush-worshipping totally duped fools who called me "Saddam-lover" (among much worse) and cyber-stalked me for 2 years? Yeah don't hold me breath...but *I* know that *THEY* nkow that *I* was right and *THEY* were duped conned stupid fools. Good enuf for me. :D

[0007]

11. Tis is indeed a shame that the Major Media Networks isn't blasting

this story out to the public.

" After she was taken into U.S. protective custody in 2003, Hanna identified a number of Iraqis, including a brigadier general, as among those who participated in torture at the jail. Based on her testimony, a number of Iraqis were subsequently arrested by U.S. and Iraqi security forces. They were all released after Hanna was flown to the United States and the case languished, officials said.

Donald Campbell, a New Jersey superior court judge who oversaw the case in Baghdad as one of the American advisers to the Iraqi judicial system, said Hanna had convinced investigators and other Iraqi and American officials in Baghdad that she was telling the truth. He noted, however, that an Iraqi doctor had examined her for evidence of past torture and rape and did not believe her. The doctor's opinion was dismissed, he said. The Post was unable to independently verify or refute her allegations of abuse.

"She was interviewed many times over many months and she was always consistent," Campbell said in a telephone interview from New Jersey. "I recall asking, 'Is she telling the truth?' The investigators told me that there was no way she could make this up."

After arriving in California, where she was first resettled, Hanna met Sara Solovitch, the author of the Esquire article, and the two agreed to work on a book about her experiences. However, her claims began to become more and more outlandish, and Solovitch began to doubt her, according to the Esquire piece.

"I went into this project anticipating that I would be working with a genuine hero," Solovitch said in an e-mail to this reporter. "Now, I believe that she is at best a pathological liar, at worst a highly intelligent con artist."

[radwriter0555]

12. I have found no evidence of the stories about rape rooms, torture & murder

at the hands of the Saddam family. Not one single verifiable account other than that wild story about the so-called athlete who had his feet beaten.

The mass graves have all be attributed to the Gulf War.

Which leaves what?

More lies like the WMDs myths.

[Judi Lynn]

14. She's a common criminal. Too bad the Washington Post

can't be reviled publicly like CBS for publishing material not provable. In this case, the W. Post contributed a wealth of misinformation which aided _Bush in his emotionally charged claims against Iraq on his way to laying waste to Iraq, and its citizens with the blessings of his party and some slower Democrats.

It IS just wonderful, however, this story is coming out now. Hope it may prompt a few of these idjits to reexamine their beliefs.

[Tempest]

15. Another Bush, another fabricated story

Remember the Kuwaiti girl who told Congress Iraqis were throwing babies out of incubators?

That story turned out to be a lie too.