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With executions reported, Ex-POWs recall horrors
as Iraqi captives
Kansas City Star
Mar. 27, 2003 08:30 AM
KANSAS CITY, Mo. - When Troy Dunlap was captured in 1991, he says, Iraqi soldiers beat him,
forced him into a dark closet, and covered him with a blanket doused in kerosene. He waited all night
for them to return with a match.
After Daniel Stamaris fell into the hands of Iraqi soldiers in the Persian Gulf
War, they tossed him - his leg, pelvis and ribs broken - into the back of a
vehicle. As he writhed in pain, his head hanging over the tailgate, they paraded
him around for others who spat on him.
"When they were done showing me off, they dumped me out in the desert in
the middle of nowhere and left me to die," Stamaris said.
Over the years, few have paid much attention to the way Iraq treated its 21
U.S. prisoners of war. Now, with seven Americans captive in Iraq, the former
POWs say Americans should know what happened in 1991.
"The Iraqi regime needs to be held responsible for what they did to us and for
whatever treatment they are giving POWs now," Stamaris said.
Seventeen of the former Persian Gulf War POWs tell their stories in a lawsuit
they filed in 2002 against Iraq and its leader, Saddam Hussein. All say they
were tortured.
The treatment included beatings, mock executions, threats of castration, and
systematic starvation, they say in the lawsuit. Some POWs were urinated upon;
some were handcuffed so tightly their hands swelled grotesquely. One suffered
electric shocks so severe that he cracked several of his teeth.
Their lawsuit seeks millions of dollars in Iraqi funds frozen in the United
States. Part of the money would go toward establishing a foundation to help
today's POWs, said Tony Onorato, an attorney with Steptoe & Johnson, the
firm representing the POWs in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.
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"What we seek in many ways is to do what is happening now - to raise
awareness of the plight of these POWs in the Gulf War and about what can
happen to POWs if would-be torturers go undeterred," Onorato said.
Clearly, Iraqis violated the rules of the 1949 Geneva Convention in the Persian
Gulf War, said Leila Sadat, professor of international law at Washington
University in St. Louis.
The difficulty in holding them responsible has been in coming up with a
forum, she said.
International tribunals were not an option in 1991, she said. And although
tribunals have been used recently in Bosnia and elsewhere, she said, the Bush
administration does not seem interested in that approach.
The figure of 21 POWs in the first war does not include Scott Speicher, a Navy
pilot, formerly of Kansas City, whom the Pentagon considers "missing-
captured."
Dunlap said any country that tortured prisoners should be punished. There
must be a deterrent, said Dunlap, of Joliet, Ill.
He was captured Feb. 27, 1991, and held seven days. He said in an interview
this week that he had nothing to eat until the day before he was released. Then
he got a bit of fruit. He lost 18 pounds. His toilet was a coffee can.
"They kept us in a small prison cell where we were beaten regularly," Dunlap
said.
When they interrogated him, Dunlap said, he would give only his name and
serial number.
"They told me they would cut off my fingers at one point. I had an Iraqi soldier
put a gun to my head and pull the trigger. I was in the state of mind that they
were going to kill me, so I was trying to be as defiant as I could."
Dunlap said it was hard to talk about what he went through, but people should know the truth. He said
he supported the coalition effort to free Iraq "100 percent."
"I'd like to wish Godspeed for the U.S. troops over there and hope they come home soon," he said.
Stamaris, of Headland, Ala., was on the same Blackhawk helicopter. Five of the eight on board died.
Because the Iraqis did not inform the International Committee of the Red Cross that he was a captive,
his family initially thought he had died in the crash.
Stamaris said that after the Iraqis left him to die in the desert, he prayed a lot that night. The next day,
other Iraqis picked him up. They told him they would take him to a hospital.
"I didn't believe them, but what could I do?" he said.
They took him to Basra and left him on a stretcher in a courtyard.
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"An Iraqi came up and said they were going to cut my leg off," Stamaris recalled.
He lay there for 10 minutes, petrified. Then other soldiers loaded him in a vehicle and paraded him
through the streets.
He said Iraqis spat on him, and threatened to castrate him and kill him. On the fourth day of his
captivity, they took him to Baghdad, where he had surgery.
Stamaris was held eight days.
Like Dunlap, Stamaris said he supported the invasion of Iraq. Those who say they oppose the invasion
are saying they support Hussein, he said.
"I look at it pretty much black and white," he said. "There's good and evil."
Dunlap said he worried that the captives today would be treated worse than those in 1991.
"At that point, we were trying to eject them (the Iraqis) from another country (Kuwait)," he said, "and
this time we are invading their homeland. The closer we get to Baghdad, the more people will hate us.
When they have nothing left to live for, what will they care about our Americans?"
But Dale Storr of Spokane, Wash., another POW in 1991 who also was tortured, saw things differently.
"When I was shot down, my interrogators told me I was not to be treated according to the Geneva
Conventions, that I was not a prisoner of war, I was a war criminal."
This time, he said, Iraqis know the U.S.-led coalition will one day be in control. That should give the
Iraqis incentive to treat their captives humanely, he said.
"I hope to God they do," he said.
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