# Faisalabad Hospital > **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou. > > Cite as: "Faisalabad Hospital," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/faisalabad-hospital/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia. *The hospital where a dying Abu Zubaydah was taken after the raid of March 2002 — open windows, animals in the corridors, mosquitoes on open wounds, and a bar of Irish Spring soap used as a pincushion for reusable syringes — which came under fire from the street while he was on the operating table.* - **Where:** Faisalabad, Pakistan - **When:** March 2002 - **Patient:** [Abu Zubaydah](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/abu-zubaydah), shot in the thigh, groin and stomach - **Kiriakou's description:** *"One of the most horrible places on earth"* **Faisalabad Hospital** is where the CIA and its Pakistani partners took [Abu Zubaydah](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/abu-zubaydah) in the early hours of the morning after he was shot jumping from the roof of the house at [Site 13](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/site-13). Identified by an ear photographed in the street and matched at headquarters, he was thrown into the back of a filthy Toyota pickup and driven to what [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) calls *"one of the most horrible places on earth."*[1] ## The building Kiriakou says he is not overstating it. The windows and doors stood open; dogs and cats strolled up and down the corridors *"like they own the place"*; swarms of mosquitoes fed on patients' open wounds. There was a bar of Irish Spring soap with syringes stuck into it — a needle would be pulled out, filled, used, and pushed back into the soap, *"and that was as clean as it was going to get."*[2] It was about twenty past three in the morning when half a dozen men, most of them Americans dressed as Pakistanis, walked into the emergency room with an Arab bleeding to death from multiple gunshot wounds. Kiriakou told the doctor he had to save him — *"my orders were to take him alive"* — and the doctor stood with his mouth agape before the patient was rolled into the operating theatre.[3] ## Under fire Word travelled. Al-Qaeda's community in the city learned that someone had been taken, and cars began driving past the hospital and opening fire on it while Kiriakou and the others lay on the floor. He told [Colonel Khaled](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/colonel-khaled) that if the attackers realised how lightly armed they were, they were dead, and asked for a helicopter; one landed in the car park twenty minutes later.[4] Kiriakou pulled his t-shirt over his nose and mouth, walked into the operating theatre and told the surgeon to wrap it up. They sewed the patient closed as fast as they could, loaded him aboard, and flew fifty miles to a Pakistani military base outside Lahore where an eight-bed clinic abutted the runway — the beds arranged in spokes around a central nursing station, and every other patient in it a Pakistani army enlisted man who had attempted suicide.[5][6] The clinic's surgeon warned Kiriakou that he had never seen a patient with wounds so severe survive.[7] ## See also - [Abu Zubaydah](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/abu-zubaydah) - [Colonel Khaled](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/colonel-khaled) - [Site 13](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/site-13) - [Mr. Fish](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mr-fish) ## Sources 1. S1E16 Captured (2026-02-23), at 40:23. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/698a608241bb4de4911a8235/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-02-23-dead-drop-s1e16-captured/ 2. S1E16 Captured (2026-02-23), at 40:54. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/698a608241bb4de4911a8235/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-02-23-dead-drop-s1e16-captured/ 3. S1E16 Captured (2026-02-23), at 41:29. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/698a608241bb4de4911a8235/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-02-23-dead-drop-s1e16-captured/ 4. S1E16 Captured (2026-02-23), at 42:00. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/698a608241bb4de4911a8235/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-02-23-dead-drop-s1e16-captured/ 5. S1E16 Captured (2026-02-23), at 42:30. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/698a608241bb4de4911a8235/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-02-23-dead-drop-s1e16-captured/ 6. S1E16 Captured (2026-02-23), at 43:33. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/698a608241bb4de4911a8235/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-02-23-dead-drop-s1e16-captured/ 7. S1E16 Captured (2026-02-23), at 43:01. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/698a608241bb4de4911a8235/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-02-23-dead-drop-s1e16-captured/ --- From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/faisalabad-hospital/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt