Kar said they were stopped and questioned by the Iraqi security forces almost daily, but were always sent on their way after showing their passports and visas. He said his Iranian passport and Iranian cameraman were liabilities with some Iraqi policemen and soldiers still bitter about the Iran-Iraq war. Still, Kar said, he was more concerned that insurgents might find his American passport and Veterans Affairs identity card.
That morning, the two filmmakers went to find a driver for a quick return trip to Balad. They did not like the looks of the driver they found, Kar said, but the man agreed to charge a bit less than they had paid the day before. Once more, they were stopped at a checkpoint near Balad. "Everything was fine," Kar said. "Then they popped the trunk."
Within little more than an hour after they were driven to a police substation, Kar said, the Iraqi police officials appeared to have determined that the 35 timers belonged to the driver, not his passengers. When two US soldiers walked into the police station, Kar recalled thinking: "Yay! The cavalry's here."
Instead, the three men were handcuffed, blindfolded and led away to an adjacent US operating base without even a question, he said. About 2am, Kar said, he was finally brought in for an interrogation by two soldiers he presumed to be from military intelligence.
"You're in big trouble," he recalled the younger soldier telling him as he protested his innocence. "You're an American terrorist enemy combatant. You're the next John Walker Lindh."
After interrogating the driver, Kar said, the older soldier told him that the driver had admitted the timers were his. But when the three men were brought to the interrogation room again the next day, it was to be photographed together kneeling before a map of Iraq on which their camera equipment and the 35 timers had been carefully arranged.
The men were driven first to a detention camp at Tikrit. Then Kar and Faraji were taken by helicopter to Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, where their treatment immediately got rougher.
In a crowded processing room, Kar said, guards yelled and cursed at the two men, with one of them shouting: "You terrorist! You here to kill Americans?"
Another soldier screamed at Faraji to strip, although the crowd of soldiers around him included women, Kar said.
"What hit me was, there was no mercy," Kar recalled.
"I couldn't have more respect for the rank-and-file soldiers, but the system is broken," Kar said. "When an Iraqi is detained there, he comes out angry and wanting payback."
RSS