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US raid finds 200 victims in secret Iraqi 'torture' jail
The discovery of 'abused' detainees comes as Bush's Senate allies
demand Iraq exit strategy
By Catherine Philp
11/16/05 "The
Times" -- -- UP TO 200 starving Iraqis bearing signs
of torture have been found in an apparently secret jail in Baghdad
in circumstances reminiscent of Saddam Hussein’s regime.
The detainees were found when American troops surrounded and took
control of an Interior Ministry building in the Jadriya
neighbourhood of Baghdad on Sunday night.
The raid was carried out after reports that detainees were being
illegally held and tortured there.
When US forces arrived, officials said that only 40 detainees were
being held. But as troops moved through the building, opening door
after door, they found scores of prisoners, many in very poor
health. The Americans had apparently been tipped off to the prison’s
existence by relatives of those being detained there.
It appears to be the country’s new Abu Ghraib, the notorious Baghdad
prison where Iraqis were pictured being humiliated by American
soldiers.
The discovery came as Republican leaders in the Senate called on
President Bush yesterday to set out a strategy allowing for a
withdrawal of 160,000 US troops from Iraq. It is seen as a clear
sign that the increasingly unpopular war is unnerving the
President’s own party.
The Senate’s Republican leadership, usually loyal to the White
House, demanded that 2006 be a “significant transition” year in
which Iraqi forces took the lead in securing their country, so that
US troops could begin a phased withdrawal. The proposal by Bill
Frist, the Republican Senate Leader, and John Warner, the veteran
Virginian Republican and chairman of the powerful Armed Services
Committee, was passed by 79 votes to 19.
Official announcement of the secret jail’s discovery came a day
after a damning United Nations report into the brutal conditions and
lack of access to legal counsel in Iraq’s overcrowded prisons.
The UN Assistance Mission in Iraq expressed concern about the large
number of detainees being held in the country’s prisons and
suggested that Iraqi police and special forces had abused the human
rights of suspects during security sweeps.
But the discovery of an apparently illegal detention centre has
raised even more questions over the behaviour of the security forces
in Iraq, which are being primed to take over duties from a
withdrawing coalition force.
It also revived memories of how the security forces behaved under
Saddam Hussein, who routinely had people arrested and tortured at
secret prisons and detention centres around the city, many of which
were not discovered until after his regime had fallen.
Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Prime Minister, said that there would be an
investigation into allegations that Interior Ministry officials had
tortured detainees held in the basement prison in connection with
the mostly Sunni insurgency.
“I was informed that there were 173 detainees held at an Interior
Ministry prison and they appear to be malnourished,” Mr al-Jaafari
said. “There is also some talk that they were subjected to some kind
of torture.”
He said that the detainees had been moved to another location and
were receiving medical care. American military officials refused
last night to comment on their role in bringing the secret prison to
light, referring all questions to the Interior Ministry.
Major General Hussein Kamal, the Interior Ministry’s under-secretary
for security, confirmed that the raid on the building had taken
place but said that all those being held in the facility were
“terrorists”.
However, during a chance street encounter, Brigadier General Karl
Horst, who commanded the troops that carried out the raid, said that
US forces now planned to raid all known detention facilities in the
capital. “We’re going to hit every single one of them,” he told the
Los Angeles Times. The raid was among the first known instances in
which American forces in Baghdad have stepped in to protect
prisoners being held in Iraqi detention.
The discovery will do nothing to calm relations between the
country’s warring ethnic groups. Most of the prisoners discovered in
the jail were Sunni Arabs, members of the minority ethnic group
dominant under Saddam but who make up the backbone of the insurgency
fighting the military occupation and the US-backed Government.
The Interior Ministry, controlled by Shias, the oppressed majority
under Saddam, has been accused of using its security forces to
detain, torture and kill hundreds of Sunnis because of their
religious affiliation.
Copyright 2005 Times Newspapers Ltd.
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