The Newsday journalists, who were arrested by the regime for several days and recently got out of Iraq, have first-hand accounts of torture in the prison in which they were held.

The two said they were never abused physically, although conditions in the prison were harsh. They often heard and felt bombs exploding in and around Baghdad. ''At times it was extremely close,'' Saman said. ''The cells would kind of rumble.''

They said they often heard the screams of other prisoners being tortured and saw some with their eyes and faces bloodied and swollen.

''There were beatings and torture going on outside our cells, in the corridor, literally,'' McAllester said. Other inmates hobbled around, apparently because the soles of their feet had been burned or otherwise injured.

Also,

She also told her sister that the Iraqi prison officials would not let the Red Cross see them there.

She must be lying. Ramsey Clark himself says that talk like this is just propaganda.