BAGHDAD, 31 May 2004 - Two Palestinian diplomats have been released from a year in US custody in Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison in an ordeal that the Palestinian charge d'affaires called a flagrant violation of diplomatic norms.
"I went to Abu Ghraib to meet them yesterday. I saw the cells. Ninety men held in one barracks," Dalil Al-Qusous told Reuters.
"The Americans have no respect for diplomacy. When they came out it was emotional. They said they thought they would never make it out." Najah Abdel Rahman, 53, then Palestinian charge d'affaires, and commercial attache Mounir Soubhi, in his mid forties, were held in Abu Ghraib prison for alleged illegal possession of weapons and suspicion of links to terrorism, Qusous said.
US officials yesterday said they had no comment. The United States said at the time that all diplomats lost immunity after the fall of Saddam Hussein in April last year and Washington did not recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the representative of a sovereign state. But Qusous called the detentions a blatant disregard for diplomatic immunity in the name of US President George W. Bush's war on terror.
The diplomats' odyssey began on May 28, 2003 when employees arrived at the embassy in the morning. Qusous fled when he saw the Americans rounding up people. He later learned that the Americans had arrested the two diplomats and 10 other people, including embassy security guards and Iraqi gardeners.
"There were five Kalashnikov rifles and five pistols. These were weapons that we had for 15 years as protection in the embassy during Saddam's time," said Qusous.
He said the two diplomats were handcuffed and surrounded by barbed wire outside the embassy building, where a soldier described them as "terrorists".
They were taken to a detention facility at Baghdad airport where they slept on the ground outdoors, and were later moved to Abu Ghraib.
Qusous said the diplomats did not experience the same trauma that some Iraqi inmates did at the hands of the Americans but he stressed that they faced generally poor conditions.
The veteran diplomat, who will return to his job as cultural attache when Abdel Rahman is fit enough to take up his post again, said the Palestinian experience at Abu Ghraib suggests anyone is vulnerable to American detention in Iraq.
"They just arrest anybody they want," he said, sitting in his embassy building with a dusty flag. The US occupation has not been kind to Palestinians. Nearly 300 Palestinian families were evicted from their homes after the invasion.
Qusous said the Americans are currently holding 15 Palestinian students on the same allegations that sent the two diplomats to jail. He said the diplomats, who were born in Iraq after their parents were displaced in 1948 from what is now Israel, were in bad shape and needed to undergo medical tests.
For the last year he has worked with the Palestinian Authority and a senior Arab diplomat in Baghdad to win their release. A former Palestinian prime minister delivered a letter to Bush to plead on their behalf, he said.
