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On the spot: 'torture prison is tip of the iceberg'
Catherine Philp, reporting for The Times from Baghdad, says that a
fiery press conference by Bayan Baqer Solagh, the Interior Minister,
is unlikely to ease the political damage of a growing torture
scandal in Iraq.
By Catherine Philp
11/17/05 "The
Times" -- - -"There is not the same kind of shock and controversy over the
discovery of the basement prison in Jadriya as there was over abuse
scandal Abu Ghraib, because everyone has known for some time that
this has been going on. Everyone knows someone to whom this has
happened.
"There is more of a sense of relief that it has finally been brought
into the open - although people are angry that it has taken so long.
"Sunni groups have been trying to present evidence - photographs,
videos and testimony - for months, but they have only been taken
seriously now that the Americans have become involved.
"Most of the press today have run the photographs [of the abused
prisoners]. They have been in circulation for some time, but it is
only now that they are being widely published.
"I've been collecting testimony today from people who have been held
in all sorts of centres: interestingly, none of them was held in the
Jadriya prison - they were all held in other places, which have
apparently not been declared. It suggests that this is just the tip
of the iceberg.
"This is going to do nothing to calm the tensions between the ethnic
groups. We have always laboured under the impression - which now
turns out to be a myth - that the Shia groups have been restrained
in the face of provocation from the Sunni community.
"Now it has become much more publicly clear that the Shia have been
waging their own form of civil war through their security services
and death squads.
"In his press conference today the Interior Minister denied this.
However, he was extremely defensive and not very convincing.
"I was watching it on television with some local people and at one
point we had to turn the volume down. He was just shouting and
yelling for an hour. It's hard to imagine how he can survive in his
position
"One telling detail was when he said there was no torture and added:
'No one was beheaded, no one was killed.'
"The minister is a former member of al-Badr, a Shia Muslim militia,
and that comment suggests that he sets quite a high bar for what
constitutes torture."
Copyright 2005 Times Newspapers Ltd.
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