Appendix A
Testimony of Mr. Sami Soltan
Born 12 July 1955, Baghdad
Kurdish Iraqi citizen, now resident in Sweden
Interviewed in Sweden on 13 September 1994
I was taken hostage in April 1983. I was then a conscript soldier, having finished technical college. I came home to find the security forces waiting in my house, my entire family having been arrested and taken to the General Security office, where I was taken to join them. Two days later my brother Kamael and his whole family were brought in and we were all taken to the deportation centre set up in the Sha-ab Football Stadium complex. On the next day my younger brother Muzafer was taken to Al Fathalia prison.
A week later I was transferred to the Ministry of Defence Military Security Service Section Branch No.4 where I was repeatedly kicked and punched during the course of interrogation (some of my family had escaped abroad). Three days later I was transferred to the Al Rashid Military Prison No.1, where I was held for 5 months. I was then sent back to the military barracks in Arbil where I was imprisoned until being transferred to the Haja Omran (North) military barracks' prison.
In October 1983 I was sent back to the General Security office in Baghdad and on the same day transferred to Abu Ghraib accused of being an Iranian. I was kept in Block 8 till 5 December 1984 (two weeks after we had staged a noisy but non-violent protest in the prison. We were then taken to Qalat Al Salman, where I calculate the total numbers to have been 2,100, later increased to 2,600. Towards the end of 1985 Saddam issued a command that hostages be interrogated to determine who could be released. I was not one of them. I remained in Qalat Al Salman until early 1988 by which time I reckon there were only 250 of us left.
We were then transferred in groups of about 30. My group, totalling 28, was taken to Abu Sakhaeer prison near Al Najaf. Other groups were sent to Al Samawa, Al Karbola, Al Tikrit, Al Babylon, Al Diwaniyah, and Al Ramadi. Some time later we were all re-united in the Abu Ghraib Special Sentence Section. In early 1989 they started transferring us in small groups of between 5 and 8 hostages to the General Security prison in Baghdad. There were 8 in my group.
I was interrogated again and detained for a further 5 days. Then my remaining family were contacted and I was released on 25 February 1989. I was given no documents or passport, just a piece of paper with tow telephone numbers. On 26 April 1991 I escaped to Kuwait and then to Iran. After 10 months, with the help of the Red Cross I reached Moscow, then I was granted political asylum in Sweden on 28 July 1992.
During my detention I heard that some hostages had been subjected to chemical and biological warfare experiments but was told no details. I calculate that of the hostages held in Qalat Al Salman between 500 and 600 were released. I believe the other have been held in areas where the uprising which followed the Gulf did not take place Al Mosul, Al Tikrit, Al Ramadi and Baghdad. I have been told that at least six other prisons/camps identical to Qalat Al Salman were built in the early 1980's; the numbers of hostages held in them and the numbers released are unknown to me.