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The Rape of Sabrine

In the southern part of Baghdad, Sabrine Al-Janabi, a young Iraqi woman was taken from her home by security forces -- the ones Bush and Rice love to talk about -- who proceeded to gang rape her. From shame and fear, many Iraqi women would remain silent. But Sabrine went on Al Jazeera and in a hoarse voice, with only her eyes visible, told what happened. What follows is a translation of what she said provided by Riverbend, who writes the girl blog from Baghdad. You can read it at riverbendblog.blogspot.com.

"…I told him, 'I don’t have anything [I did not do anything].' He said, 'You don’t have anything?' One of them threw me on the ground and my head hit the tiles. He did what he did -- I mean he raped me. The second one came and raped me. The third one also raped me. [Pause- sobbing] I begged them and cried, and one of them covered my mouth. [Unclear, crying] Another one of them came and said, 'Are you finished? We also want our turn.' So they answered, 'No, an American committee came.' They took me to the judge."

Anchorwoman: Sabrine Al Janabi said that one of the security forces videotaped/photographed her and threatened to kill her if she told anyone about the rape. Another officer raped her after she saw the investigative judge.

Sabrine continuing:

"One of them, he said… I told him, 'Please -- by your father and mother -- let me go.' He said, 'No, no -- by my mother's soul I'll let you go -- but on one condition, you give me one single thing.' I said, 'What?' He said, '[I want] to rape you.' I told him, 'No- I can’t.' So he took me to a room with a weapon… It had a weapon, a Klashnikov, a small bed [Unclear], he sat me on it. So [the officer came] and told him, 'Leave her to me.' I swore to him on the Quran, I told him, 'By the light of the Prophet I don’t do such things…' He said, 'You don’t do such things?' I said, 'Yes'."

[Crying] "He picked up a black hose, like a pipe. He hit me on the thigh. [Crying] I told him, 'What do you want from me? Do you want me to tell you rape me? But I can't… I'm not one of those ***** [Prostitutes] I don't do such things.' So he said to me, 'We take what we want and what we don’t want we kill. That’s that.' [Sobbing] I can't anymore… please, I can't finish."

What more do the members of Congress need for a war crimes investigation? How many more war crimes are we going to sluff off, claiming we had nothing to do with them? These are our people. We put them there. Will McCain read Sabrine? What about Hillary? What about the brave new members of the so-called progressive Democratic party? Where is Speaker Pelosi? Levin of the Armed Services Committee? Biden? Warner and all those genteel Republicans whose consciences are stricken by the war?

Stand up ladies and gentlemen of the Congress. Let us for once hear from you.

Posted by James Ridgeway on 02/19/07 at 3:57 PM | E-mail | Print | Digg | de.licio.us | Reddit | Newsvine | Yahoo! MyWeb | StumbleUpon | Netscape | Google |