Saleh Nizar, Iraq “I thought I would not stand the torture”

[muriel_volestrangler]

Saleh Nizar, a 58-year-old gardener, says he was tortured in an Iraqi prison after he was arrested and accused of participating in an attack in the capital, Baghdad. He was arrested on 15 October 2006 and set free on 5 April 2007 after he was helped by a senior Iraqi officer who said that Nizar was his gardener and that he was definitely innocent.

As result of the torture he endured, one of his legs sustained serious injuries and doctors said it might require amputation. Nizar, who has a heart condition which he did not receive treatment for while in prison, now spends much of his time in hospitals and clinics trying to stay alive.
...
“The most common torture was the use of electric shocks and cigarettes to burn our skin. Other times they would beat us with pieces of wood or electrical wire.

“Some detainees were also raped by the officers in front of everyone. And if the victim tried to run away, they hit him with a piece of wood. The suffering I endured in prison was doubled because in addition to the pain that I had after each torture session, there was also the desperate screaming of the other prisoners.

http://www.irinnews.org/HOVReport.aspx?ReportId=71861

Cigarette burns? As Approved by the President of the United States:

Still, at Yale as on other campuses around the country, an era was ending and fun-loving preppies were falling out of step. In the fall of 1967, when huge numbers of college students were marching on Washington to protest the Vietnam War, Bush was quoted in the New York Times defending the branding of fraternity pledges with a hot coat hanger, saying the resulting wounds resembled "only a cigarette burn."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/wh2000/stories/bush072799.htm