Muhammad Al-Karbi, brother of Ali Al-Karbi who is in a prison in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, said relatives had received information that many Saudi prisoners have been subjected to torture in Iraqi jails, according to a report in Al-Watan daily recently.
“Many Saudi families have been forced to cancel their planned trips to Iraq to meet their sons in the wake of the recent spate of violence in the war-ravaged country,” he said.
Al-Karbi said that when he had contacted the secretary to the representative of the International Committee for the Red Cross in Kuwait, he was informed that Saudi authorities had decided not to allow Saudi parents to visit their sons in Iraqi prisons.
However, Fuad Bawaba, press attaché at the committee, told the newspaper that they had not received any official letter from the Saudi authorities. “There had been coordination with the committee for the visit for several months but the visits are yet to take place,” he said.
Referring to the plight of Ali Al-Karbi, his brother Muhammad said that it is similar to the conditions of other Saudi prisoners in Iraq. “Ali has been languishing in Iraqi prisons for more than six years. First, he was kept at the notorious Abu Gharib prison from Dec. 6, 2005. Then he was shifted to Boka detention center in Basra in south Iraq and Badus prison in Mosul in north before ending up in Sosa fort prison in Kurdistan,” he said.
Muhammad said the last phone call he had received from Ali was on Thursday. “The call came after a long gap of two years when the family received the last letter from Ali on Dec. 6, 2009. My family found out about the intensity of torture and suffering that Ali had to face in various prisons from his letters,” he said.
According to Muhammad, the letters showed the pathetic conditions of Saudi prisoners in Iraq. “In one letter, while referring to treatment of sick prisoners, Ali asked us to pray for the sick among them. Ali also informed us that he had learned to carry out household chores such as cleaning floors, washing blankets and stitching dresses,” he said.
Ali Al-Karbi is one of 107 Saudi prisoners on a list that was handed over to the Saudi authorities by the Iraqi Embassy in Riyadh earlier.
