FOCUS: Torture Continues: Iraqis Beaten, Hung by Wrists, Shocked

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" Zepp " <zepp

 

Tue, 25 Jan 2005 07:49:45 -0800

Subject:[Zepps_News] #t r u t h o u t - FOCUS: Torture Continues:

Iraqis Beaten, Hung by Wrists, Shocked

 

 

 

<http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/012605Z.shtml>

 

Torture in Iraq Still Routine, Report Says

By Doug Struck

The Washington Post

 

Tuesday 25 January 2005

 

Detainees beaten, hung by wrists, shocked by security forces,

rights group finds.

 

BAGHDAD - Twenty months after Saddam Hussein's government was toppled

and its torture chambers unlocked, Iraqis are again being routinely

beaten, hung by their wrists and shocked with electrical wires,

according to a report by a human rights organization.

 

Iraqi police, jailers and intelligence agents, many of them holding

the same jobs they had under Hussein, are " committing systematic torture

and other abuses " of detainees, Human Rights Watch said in a report to

be released Tuesday.

 

Legal safeguards are being ignored, political opponents are targeted

for arrest, and the government of interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi

" appears to be actively taking part, or is at least complicit, in these

grave violations of fundamental human rights, " the report concludes.

 

A spokesman for Allawi declined to comment, Monday and said " I will

put this report on the prime minister's desk tomorrow to see if he has

any reaction. "

 

Ibrahim Jafari, an interim vice president, said in an interview that

security forces needed to be tougher to combat the campaign of violence

by opponents of the election.

 

" I think the security people are not arresting enough and are

releasing them too quickly, " Jafari said. " And many of the security

people are cooperating with the criminals. I think we have to put

security as our priority. "

 

The Human Rights Watch report acknowledged that Iraq was " in the

throes of a significant insurgency " in which 1,300 police officers and

thousands of civilians were killed in the last four months of 2004. But

it argued that " no government, not Saddam Hussein's, not the occupying

powers and not the Iraqi Interim Government, can justify ill-treatment

of persons in custody in the name of security. "

 

The report was based on interviews with 90 current and former

detainees in Iraq conducted between July and October last year, many of

them interviewed when they were brought to court for initial

proceedings. Of those, 72 said they were " tortured or ill-treated, " the

report says. It recounts numerous individual cases of torture, and says

the victims often had fresh scars or bruises.

 

" I was beaten with cables and suspended by my hands tied behind my

back, " Dhia Fawzi Shaid, 30, a resident of Baghdad, told the human

rights investigators, according to the report. " I saw young men there

lying on the floor while police [stepped] on their heads with boots. It

was worse than Saddam's regime. "

 

Another, identified in the report as Ali Rashid Abbadi, 21, said he

was arrested by police after the bombing of a liquor store on July 11.

" The police came and started hitting us, " he told Human Rights Watch.

" They shouted at us to confess. . . . We were blindfolded and our hands

were tied behind our backs. They poured cold water over me and applied

electric shocks to my genitals. "

 

Abbadi was later released by a judge for lack of evidence, the report

says.

 

The report deals with the conduct of Iraqi authorities but not that

of U.S. military forces at three U.S.-run detention facilities in Iraq,

including Abu Ghraib. The three sites currently hold about 9,000

prisoners.

 

The Washington Post contacted several people whose cases were

included in the report. They declined to speak to a reporter, saying

they feared retaliation by police.

 

" The majority of detainees . . . stated that torture and

ill-treatment during the initial period was commonplace " in jails run by

the Interior Ministry, the report says. The abuses included " routine

beatings . . . using cables, [rubber] hosepipes and metal rods . . .

kicking, slapping and punching, prolonged suspension from the wrists, "

as well as electric shocks to the genitals and long periods spent

blindfolded and handcuffed.

 

Hania Mufti, the Baghdad director of Human Rights Watch and chief

author of the report, said she did not find examples of abuses that were

on a par with the worst atrocities committed under Hussein's rule, such

as mock executions, disfigurement with acid or sexual assaults on family

members in front of prisoners. But in many other respects, she said,

treatment of those swept up by police had changed little.

 

" Many of the same people who worked in Saddam's time are still doing

those jobs today. So there is a continuity of personnel and of

mind-set, " she said in an interview. " I think the Iraqi people

themselves thought there was going to be a different system. Every day,

they are finding it is not so different. "

 

The report also says authorities made a mockery of legal safeguards.

People said they were arrested without warrants and held without charges

for days, weeks or months. Police officials ignored summonses from

judges, and judges who became too demanding of authorities were removed

from their jobs.

 

" The message has not gone out from the government that torture will

not be tolerated, " Mufti said. And foreign advisers hired to assist the

Iraqi police have failed to object, she said.

 

The report relates " the only known case in which U.S. forces

intervened to stop detainee abuse. " It said scouts from an Oregon Army

National Guard unit saw Iraqi guards at an Interior Ministry compound

abusing detainees on June 29. A soldier took pictures through his rifle

scope of detainees who were blindfolded and bound.

 

According to an account related in the report by Capt. Jarrell

Southal of the National Guard, his soldiers entered the compound and

found bound prisoners " writhing in pain " and complaining of lack of

water. They gave water to the men, moved them out of the sun and then

disarmed the Iraqi police. But when the Oregon soldiers radioed up their

chain of command for instructions, they were ordered to " return the

prisoners to the Iraqi authorities and leave the detention yard. "

 

-------

--

Election 2004

The Triumph of the Swill

" The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost

duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation.

It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our

nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation

of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national

life. "

Adolph Hitler, My New World Order,

Proclamation to the German Nation

at Berlin, February 1, 1933

 

 

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Pay your taxes so the rich don't have to.

 

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