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Abuse of prisoners in Iraq widespread, officials say
By Leila Fadel
Knight Ridder Newspapers
11/29/05
Mercury News" -- -- BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi authorities have
been torturing and abusing prisoners in jails across the country,
current and former Iraqi officials charged.
Deputy Human Rights Minister Aida Ussayran and Gen. Muntadhar Muhi
al-Samaraee, a former head of special forces at the Ministry of the
Interior, made the allegations two weeks after 169 men who
apparently had been tortured were discovered in a south-central
Baghdad building run by the Interior Ministry. The men reportedly
had been beaten with leather belts and steel rods, crammed into tiny
rooms with tens of others and forced to sit in their own excrement.
A senior American military official, who spoke on the condition of
anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, said he
suspected that the abuse wasn't isolated to the jail the U.S.
military discovered.
Ussayran said abuse was taking place across the country.
In five visits to a women's prison in Baghdad's Kadhimiya district
over more than three months, the Human Rights Ministry found that
women were being raped by male guards, Ussayran said. That problem
continues.
One woman told the Human Rights Ministry that she was raped seven
times on the seventh floor of the Interior Ministry, which is
notorious to some Iraqi Sunni Muslims and home to intelligence
offices. The Human Rights Ministry investigated that, and Ussayran
said the problem had been rectified.
No one was able to estimate the extent of the abuse, but the Iraqi
government expects the results of the investigation into the Baghdad
secret prison and into other prisons by the end of the week, Laith
Kubba, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, said
Saturday.
The secret jail was discovered as American officials are training
Iraqi forces to take over security as a prelude to withdrawing U.S.
troops. But evidence of widespread abuse of prisoners, especially a
pattern of Shiite Muslim troops abusing Sunni captives - would raise
new questions about whether Iraq's U.S.-backed government seeks to
end the abuses of Saddam Hussein's regime or to exact revenge for
them.
Iraq's insurgents are mainly Sunnis, who ruled the country under
Saddam and now are blamed for bombing Shiite mosques, markets and
schools.
"Things have changed since Abu Ghraib," Ussayran said, referring to
prisoner abuse at a U.S. military-run prison in Iraq two years ago.
"Whoever is captured by the Americans is much happier then those who
are captured by our forces. We have some people who are very clever
who are looking for other secret prisons. I'm sure that there are
more."
Interior Minister Bayn Jabr has downplayed the extent of the
problem, saying that only seven prisoners out of the 169 who were
discovered at the facility in Baghdad's Jadriyah district had been
mistreated.
Jabr is a Shiite with close ties to the Badr Organization, an
Iranian-backed militia that's accused of running the jail. The
militia is the armed wing of one of Iraq's most influential Shiite
political parties, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in
Iraq.
Two police officers with knowledge of the jail in Jadriyah said it
was run by the Badr Organization, which has been rumored for months
to be involved in the torture and deaths of Sunni men who were
kidnapped from their homes. Both agreed to speak only on the
condition of anonymity to prevent retaliation against themselves or
their families.
Adnan Janabi, the head of the Interior Ministry's special police
commandos, said that while mistakes had been made, perhaps only one
detainee out of every 200 had been mistreated.
However, former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite, told
the London newspaper The Observer that Shiites are behind the death
squads and secret torture centers.
"People are doing the same as Saddam's time and worse," he said. "It
is an appropriate comparison."
In June, Knight Ridder reported that Badr was suspected of carrying
out a campaign of intimidation, torture and killing against Sunni
men. In a separate report, Knight Ridder documented numerous cases
in which men had been detained by people in police vehicles and
later were found dead.
In July 2004, a Knight Ridder reporter witnessed prisoners being
beaten at the Interior Ministry.
"Don't talk to me about human rights," said one interrogator who
punched several prisoners in front of a reporter. He asked not to be
named because he frequently worked undercover. "When security
settles down, we'll talk about human rights. Right now, I need
confessions."
Gen. Al-Samaraee, the special forces chief from January 2005 until
July, said it was impossible that the interior minister didn't know
that prisoners were being mistreated in Jadriyah. In an interview in
Amman, Jordan, he said torture and extrajudicial killings were
rampant while he was at the ministry, and were conducted by the Badr
Organization.
He said he left the country for medical treatment and decided not to
return because he'd received two death threats after he voiced
opposition to absorbing Badr members into the Interior Ministry.
He denied accusations by Maj. Gen. Hussein Kamal, the deputy
interior minister for intelligence, that he'd left the country after
being bailed out of jail for stealing a government car.
While he was at the ministry, al-Samaraee said, Sunni men were
beaten, tortured and killed, then thrown on the side of the road or
into rivers or left at morgues under fake names. He also charged
that secret prisons - for example, in Kut, Hilla, Amara and Basra -
are run by militia groups while the interior minister is left in the
dark.
"Raids, arrests and torture are always there, and the government
can't do anything to secure the country," al-Samaraee said. "Iraq
used to have a dictator of mass graves, now we have the democracy of
mass graves."
Abu Saad, a former prisoner, recounted his time inside the walls of
the Jadriyah jail before he was released two months ago.
Half-circles of faded blue, purple and black bruises were still
apparent in the hollows below his eyes. Faint red marks around his
wrist were evidence of when he was hung upside down in the jail, he
said. He unwrapped a bandage around his thumb to show a Knight
Ridder reporter the empty nail bed where his fingernail had been
torn off.
"I suffered little compared to the men who spent six or seven months
inside," he said. "Sometimes we felt that there were officials
visiting us, such as the Americans. The guards told us to be quiet,
not to say a word or they would beat us. Of course no one found us."
For 40 days, he was blindfolded, allowed to use a toilet every three
days and listened and peeked through the bottom of his blindfold to
see seven other detainees die.
He didn't know why he was released when he was near death. He was
arrested without a warrant, he said.
Several police officials told Knight Ridder that many of the men in
the prison were taken without warrants, although the Interior
Ministry maintains that all of them were detained legally.
U.S. officials said they were unaware of the most recent apparent
abuse at the Interior Ministry, which allegedly had gone on for
months.
The American military official said U.S. troops had searched
Interior Ministry buildings previously but only after announcing
their visits in advance. The most recent discovery was the result of
an unannounced visit to the secret jail after Jabr gave permission
to go directly to it.
American troops didn't find the 15-year-old boy they were searching
for, but soldiers forced their way into three small back rooms,
where they found gaunt men piled on top of one another. Other men
were found in a locked coat closet.
U.S. advisers act as consultants in the ministry and couldn't have
known about the abuse, Maj. Gen. Kamal said.
"Some mistakes have been made because there are a lot of detainees
in small detention (centers)," Kamal said. "We have a big number of
detainees that never went to the Justice Ministry because of the
long judicial procedures."
Gen. William G. Webster, the commander of multinational forces in
Baghdad, said that while militias were rumored to be involved in
kidnappings and extrajudicial killings of Sunni men, weeding out
militias that are among or pose as Iraqi forces was nearly
impossible. It's difficult to know if a security officer's
allegiance lies with his tribe or religious sect, he said.
Now the American military receives complaints that men in uniforms,
police trucks or military vehicles kidnap men from their homes who
later are found dead, Webster said. The problem is figuring out who
these people are, he said.
"We get lots and lots and lots of reports, tips and rumors and we
have to try to sort out which ones we think are real and which
aren't," Webster said. " A number of the stories we get these days,
people don't call someone else militia but when you get an
individual off to the side one on one ... they may whisper in your
ear and say very low and slow that it was a member of a militia."
Fadel reports for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Knight Ridder
Newspapers special correspondents Zaineb Obeid and Huda Ahmed
contributed to this report. A correspondent in Amman, Jordan, also
contributed but can't be named for security reasons.
Copyright Knight Ridder Newspapers
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