The extraordinary Iraq experiences of James Loney

Wednesday, March 10

The team spent the day in retreat at a Chaldean monastery and seminary in the Daura section of Baghdad.

Thursday March 11

U.S. military personnel removed CPTer Le Anne Clausen at gunpoint from the Iraqi Assistance Center (IAC) after she objected to an inappropriate search of a female colleague. Clausen was part of a delegation of international and Iraqi peace workers seeking a permit from the IAC to hold a 'Human Rights Solidarity Week' festival on March 16-19.

The colleague is an Iranian-born U.S. citizen.

After her colleague passed through several outdoor checkpoints and personal/bag searches, Clausen could hear U.S. soldiers joking about their colleague being born in Iran. Inside the final checkpoint, Clausen and an Italian colleague put their bags on an x-ray machine and passed through a metal detector.

However, security personnel immediately pulled Iranian-American colleague out of line and brought her to a special searching area.

After finding nothing in her bag, a male officer swabbed the colleague's hands and put the swabs into a device for detecting explosive material. He then swabbed the pockets of her loose outer jacket, and ordered her to lift up her shirt so he could put his hands inside her pants pockets and inspect them also. The colleague looked uncomfortable and politely questioned his order. The officer gestured for her to comply.

"Wait a minute, you can't search her there, you need to have a female officer do that," said Clausen. The officer told her not to interrupt.

Clausen replied, "You are violating international human rights law, you cannot touch her there. You need to get a female officer."

Although there were two U.S.-trained Iraqi security women present who conducted personal searches of Clausen and her Italian colleague, the officer refused to allow them to perform the search.

At that point, the officer called his captain, who told Clausen to step back from the area where her colleague was being searched, and instructed the officer to continue.

Clausen reiterated that they were violating human rights law and they needed to bring in a female officer.

The captain told her to either continue on into the building or leave the grounds.

Clausen responded, "I refuse to leave while my friend is being abused. I will not let a male officer search her like this. It is sexually inappropriate and illegal."

The captain replied, "Then you're out of here!" and ordered soldiers to escort Clausen from the building.

While Clausen tried to tell CPTer Stewart Vriesinga what was happening, the captain yelled, "I said you were leaving! Now!" and told the soldiers not to let her speak to anyone else.

Soldiers Clausen spoke with on the way out of the building expressed dismay at the officer's behavior. "Why didn't he use the wand we have for that kind of search?" said one. Another observed, "Anyone can put a swab in a pocket and then hand it to the machine. The machine will pick up the residue either way." A third advised Clausen to raise a complaint with the commanding officers for that unit.

Monday, March 22

Le Anne Clausen and several representatives of Iraqi and international human rights organizations accompanied an Iranian-born U.S. colleague to the Iraqi Assistance Center.

Military officials there had summoned the colleague for an interrogation and personal search two weeks after an incident in which the soldiers searched the colleague in a culturally inappropriate manner.

Upon the group's arrival, two U.S. counterintelligence agents ushered the group into a small side building. The officer who attempted an inappropriate search of the female colleague was present and ran an explosives test on the colleague's hands.

The officer reported that the test came up "positive," and suggested all the human rights workers be required to take the test.

The counterintelligence agents consulted a legal affairs officer to see if they could require the human rights workers to divulge everyone whom they had been in contact with over the past several days.

"You must have been in contact with some bad guys, and in order to protect our soldiers, we need to find out where those bad guys are," they said. The group objected to the searches and questioning on principles of confidentiality and non-retaliation against people they had interviewed or taken human rights reports from. The officials returned and admitted they did not have the legal right to force the workers to a test or to divulge their activities, but they could deny the group future entry to the IAC if they did not submit to the test.

An Iraqi human rights worker submitted to the test because she needed to return to the IAC to participate in meetings with other Iraqi organizations.

Clausen agreed to take the test with her in support, and they were both cleared. The other workers refused the test and decided they would never return to the IAC. Clausen later learned that several international organizations are experiencing similar harrassment of their employees from Coalition officials.

April 14, 2004

CPT's Chicago office received a phone call early this morning from CPT's Iraq team, saying they and the CPT delegation had left the country on the advice of their Iraqi co-workers. Both team and delegation are currently in Amman, Jordan.

The extremely aggressive actions of the U.S. and Coalition Forces throughout Iraq and especially in Fallujah have created widespread suspicion and fear of the intentions of these foreign armies.

This suspicion puts all internationals at risk.

Reports from Fallujah indicate that 60 percent of the fatalities in that city are women and children.

The U.S. has bombed one hospital there and confiscated another for use as an emergency command center for its troops.

Coalition Forces are detaining massive numbers of people throughout Iraq and Iraqis are afraid that residents of Najaf will soon experience the same treatment as the residents of Fallujah have.

CPT's most trusted Iraqi partners have urged the team to leave, saying that the current situation will make it impossible for the team to engage in normal, honest engagements with Iraqis or fulfill their mission to deter violence.

They have also suggested that CPT's presence might actually endanger their local Iraqi partners in the emerging violent chaos.

The team will be watching the situation in Iraq from Amman, where, according to CPT director Gene Stoltzfus, they "will be taking a well-earned rest."

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