University of Iowa News Release, 2 February 2007
The University Theatres Gallery series will present Joshua Casteel’s “Returns,” based on his own experiences as an Abu Ghraib interrogator, at 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, Feb. 15-17, and at 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 18, in Theatre B of the University of Iowa Theatre Building. The production is directed by David Gothard, associate director of the Abbey Theatre, Ireland’s national theater.
A student in the Iowa Playwrights Workshop, Casteel is a 27-year old from Cedar Rapids with a Christian background who, as a young boy, had always dreamed of becoming a soldier. At the age of 17 he signed a contract to go into the Army Reserves and after 9/11 was called up for full active duty. Within a few months after his training as an Arabic linguist and interrogator, he was deployed to Baghdad and the Abu Ghraib prison.
The Aug. 26, 2006, issue of the British newspaper The Guardian told his story: “His turning point came when a 22-year-old Saudi who came to Iraq for jihad was brought before him for questioning.”
Casteel has written of the incident, “The man was a self-professed jihadist, come from Saudi Arabia for the sole purpose of killing people like me. Yet the entire time we spoke, he talked to me with a gentle calmness and evangelical tone, whereby I genuinely believed he desired my good — as I grappled with trying to desire his. He tried to convert me to Islam from start to finish, and coming from an Evangelical Christian background, I felt in familiar territory, as if I were speaking simply to my Muslim counterpart. Then, we began to discuss war and violence. I asked him why he came to kill, he asked me why did I. At that point I knew I could go no further, unless I wanted to get into a debate about which one of us had the ‘more just’ cause.”
The Guardian article continues, “Two days later Casteel went to Qatar on leave. When he came back he told his commander that he would be applying for conscientious objector status. ‘I said I wouldn’t turn in my weapon while I was there or talk to the media but would carry on doing my job and when I got back home I would ask to leave the military.’ He filed his application on Feb. 16 and was granted an honorable discharge on May 31.”