WORLD> Middle East
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WORLD> Middle East
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Iraq government faces claims of prisoner abuse
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-07-18 09:24
"At dawn one day in November 2007, I was sleeping in my room with my wife when the Iraqi police broke in, handcuffed me and took me blindfolded to their headquarters," al-Rikabi told The Associated Press. "As soon as they reached the place, they began beating me severely with thick clubs and batons, hitting every part of my body, especially my legs and back. They kept on doing that for three days." He said he was ultimately transferred to another prison in Diwaniyah, 80 miles south of Baghdad, and was released the following October. "No one told me why I was arrested or why I was released," he said. An eight-member panel that al-Maliki set up after al-Obeidi's assassination to look into abuse is expected to complete its investigation in a month of two. A military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, said the panel has visited three detention centers in Baghdad and will inspect others. He said most of the abuse uncovered so far took place in Rusafa prison in eastern Baghdad. At a human rights symposium this month, al-Maliki said allegations would be investigated. The prime minister said detainees should have rights but that no one should ignore the victims of crime — "orphans and the widows who lost their husbands because of terrorism." "If every imprisoned person is innocent ... then who has destroyed the country? Who killed people?" he asked.
A 2008 report by the Human Rights Ministry identified 307 cases of alleged torture and ill-treatment among 26,249 detainees in Iraqi custody at the end of last year. The Iraqi prison population has risen to nearly 30,000 since then and is slated to grow as the US either releases or transfers its remaining 10,429 detainees. The ministry report stated that most of mistreatment occurs when the detainee is first arrested and taken to facilities run by combat soldiers and not trained prison guards. "It's an uncomfortable place to be in an (Iraqi) Ministry of Defense facility," said David King, a British adviser to Iraq's Ministry of Defense. "They are very overcrowded and they are very poorly equipped." King said, however, that the Iraqi government was interested in improving the system and supplying clean bedding and clothing and allowing relatives to visit detainees. That's little consolation to Iraqis who say they have been abused. Mohammed al-Obeidi, 28, a Sunni, told the AP that he was selling mobile phones in a rented shop in Amiriyah, 25 miles west of Baghdad, when Iraqi soldiers arrived in Humvees and apprehended him and six others in 2006. He said they were taken to a prison in northern Baghdad where he was blindfolded and handcuffed during interrogation. "The investigation officer used to tell me to confess that I was a terrorist and was planting roadside bombs," said al-Obeidi, who was never charged and was released for lack of evidence. "They used insults and sectarian slander. They normally tied me to a hook on the ceiling to keep me hanging, and then they were beating me with electric sticks. In one of these investigation sessions, my left shoulder was dislocated." Politicians loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, a firebrand anti-American Shiite cleric, also are pressuring the government on the issue. Al-Sadr's followers were rounded up in droves last year as part of a government crackdown against militia fighters. Sadrist lawmaker Falah Hassan Shanshal said he visited a month ago with detainees facing the death sentence. "One of them was 22 years old. He was crying and asked to talk to me in private," Shanshal said. "He told me that officers raped him and abused him sexually and then forced him to confess things he did not commit." "These officers were committing the same violation conducted during the former regime," he said. |
