US Forces Hold Iraqi Women As “Bargaining Chips”

[rossana <rossana at comodinoposta.org>]

US Forces Hold Iraqi Women As “Bargaining Chips”

By Samir Haddad, IOL Correspondent

BAGHDAD, September 13 (IslamOnline.net) ­ An Iraqi resistance group 
threatened Sunday, September 12, a volcano of attacks against the US 
occupation forces, who have taken Iraqi women hostage to exchange them with 
fighters.

A group calling itself the Saladin Al-Ayyubi Brigades, the military wing of 
the Sunni Islamic Front for the Iraqi Resistance, said the occupation 
troops kidnapped a mother and three girls on August 26 in Al-Latifia 
district, 70 kilometers south of Baghdad.

“The coward Americans demanded Iraqi resistance fighters in the area to lay 
down their arms and hand themselves in to release the four female hostages.

“We vow to teach the US troops a lesson for such a cowardly act unless they 
set the four free and unharmed,” read the statement, a copy of which was 
obtained by IslamOnline.net.

“Only men with brave hearts could stand up a fight at battle fields, but 
cowards resort to such mean ways.

“It is high time that the Iraqis, Sunnis, Shiites, Arabs or Kurds, took an 
action to defend their honor. We are ready to sacrifice ourselves and offer 
our lives as a simple token to protect our women,” it added.

The Islamic Front for the Iraqi Resistance 
<http://islamonline.net/English/News/2004-05/30/article06.shtml>was formed 
on May 30 as an umbrella for all Sunni resistance groups.

The incident is not unprecedented. In the wake of the downfall of the Iraqi 
regime of Saddam Hussein, US occupation forces held captive the two wives 
and sister of the former Iraqi vice president Izat Al-Douri to pressure him.

One wife was released in May, but the fate of the other is still unknown, 
according to an Iraqi female lawyer who was released from detention in May, 
2004.

According to Iraqi sources, there are at least 15 Iraqi woman detainees 
still in US-run detentions camps across Iraq.

A freed detainee told the Arabic-language Al-Wasat, a weekly supplement of 
the respectable London-based Al-Hayat newspaper, about her ordeal inside a 
US prison and how she had been 
<http://islamonline.net/English/News/2004-07/21/article06.shtml>gang-raped 
by US forces.

Italian Female Hostages

In a related development, another group calling itself the Supporters of 
Al-Zawhri, in reference to Al-Qaeda’s number two Ayman Al-Zawhri, demanded 
the US military release all Iraqi woman detainees, promising in return to 
provide information about the fate of two Italian woman hostages.

Armed men 
<http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2004-09/08/article02.shtml>kidnapped 
Simona Pari and Simona Torretta Tuesday, September 7, from their Baghdad 
offices at gunpoint along with two fellow Iraqi aid workers.

On its May 12, 2004, edition, British daily the Guardian reported that the 
US occupation forces had released most of Iraqi female detainees as the 
bombshell of abuse scandal was still unfolding.

The daily pointed out then that Iraqi female prisoners were kept in 
solitary confinement up to 23 hours a day, adding it saw pictures of US 
soldiers raping Iraqi women or photographing them naked in prison.
<http://www.islamonline.org/English/News/2004-09/13/#top>
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http://www.islamonline.org/English/News/2004-09/13/article04.shtml