Iraqi leader: Detainees appear to have been tortured
Iraq’s prime minister disclosed today that more than 170 malnourished Iraqi detainees were found at an Interior Ministry detention centre and that some appeared to have been tortured.
A Sunni politician accused the Shiite-led government of long ignoring the abuse.
US and Iraqi forces discovered the inmates when they went into the facility suspecting that individuals there may have been mistreated, the Pentagon said.
Coalition forces “found things that concerned them", Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said. He didn’t say when the inmates were found, but US troops took control of the Interior Ministry building on night.
Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite, said Iraqi authorities were investigating what happened and the detainees had been moved to a better location and given medical care.
“I was informed that there were 173 detainees held at an Interior Ministry prison and they appear to be malnourished. There is also some talk that they were subjected to some kind of torture,” al-Jaafari told reporters.
Amnesty International welcomed al-Jaafari’s decision to order an investigation but urged him to expand the probe to include all allegations of torture. Amnesty also asked him to make the results public.
The first hint of the abuse came yesterday when Maj Gen Hussein Kamal, the Interior Ministry’s under-secretary for security, said an investigation would be opened into unspecified allegations that ministry officers tortured suspects detained in connection with the country’s insurgency.
The head of the country’s largest Sunni political party said he had personally spoken to al-Jaafari and other government officials about torture at Interior Ministry detention centres, including the one where the detainees were found.
But, he said, the government routinely dismissed his complaints, calling the prisoners “former regime elements.”
“According to our knowledge, regrettably, all the detainees were Sunnis,” Mohsen Abdul-Hamid, head of the Iraqi Islamic Party, told The Associated Press.
“In order to search for a terrorist, they used to detain hundreds of innocent people and torture them brutally.”
In a statement this evening, the US Embassy welcomed al-Jaafari’s announcement of an investigation and said both Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and Gen George Casey, the top US commander in Iraq, had discussed the case “at the highest levels” of the Iraqi government.
“We agree with Iraq’s leaders that the mistreatment of detainees is a serious matter and totally unacceptable,” the statement said.
Most insurgents are Sunni Arabs, who were dominant under Saddam Hussein’s regime but lost power after his ouster.
The Interior Ministry is controlled by Shiites. Sunni leaders have accused Shiite-dominated security forces of detaining, torturing and killing hundreds of Sunnis simply because of their religious affiliation.
The prime minister did not say where the prison was located, but Kamal, the Interior Ministry’s under-secretary for security, said it was in the basement of a building in Baghdad’s neighbourhood of Jadriyah.
Late on Sunday, US troops surrounded and took control of an Interior Ministry building in Jadriyah following repeated allegations that Iraq security forces were illegally detaining and torturing people suspected of participating in the insurgency.
The Pentagon spokesman said the discovery at the facility “was clearly something that was concerning, and was appropriately looked into by the Iraqi forces with the support of the coalition.”
He said it was not a US military-run facility and he does not believe the American military was involved in the investigation.
Amnesty International also said it had recently received information of four people who were tortured while detained by Iraqi security forces.
“There have been many reports of torture and maltreatment of Iraqi detainees by the Iraqi police and security forces belonging to the Ministry of Interior such as the Wolf Brigade,” spokeswoman Nicole Choueiry said.
In Geneva, the international Red Cross said it was unaware of the detention centre but wanted to learn more.
US officials have been encouraging Sunni Arabs to take part in next month’s parliamentary elections in hopes that a strong turnout by the disaffected minority could help ease sectarian tensions, calm the insurgency and speed the day when foreign troops could go home.
Al-Jaafari, who is a Shiite, said one of his deputies will be heading the investigating committee, which will include some ministers. The committee will finish its work within two weeks, al-Jaafari said.
“They should investigate how this happened and how it reached this point,” al-Jaafari said.
Kamal said the committee will be headed by Kurdish Deputy Prime Minister Rowsch Nouri Shaways.
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