The Stringer

"At one point in his imprisonment, the Baathists took Ali to a “special” interrogation room, and ordered him to strip off his clothing. The interrogator then offered Ali a choice — either he allowed torturers to shove a large bottle up his rectum, or hammer a nail into his back. “I chose the nail,” Ali recounts in a flat tone. Twisting in his chair, he lifts up his t-shirt to exhibit a quarter-sized lump in his shoulder blade. “Believe me, sir, you have not felt such pain.”

Nine months later, the Baathists released Ali from prison — without, however, disclosing Samir’s whereabouts. Not until the collapse of Saddam nearly a quarter century later did information about missing Iraqis began to filter out to the public. “I met a man who was imprisoned with Samir,” Ali relates. “He said that my brother had gone crazy and began shouting — excuse my language, sir — ‘F**k, Saddam! F**k him! Why is he f**king us like this?’ Because of that, the regime sentenced him to death in a ‘slicing machine.’”"
National Review