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State denial adds insult to torture victims’ injuries
THE discovery of a clandestine Interior Ministry prison in Baghdad, holding scores of tortured detainees, came as no surprise to Abu Ali. What shocked him was the minister’s angry insistence yesterday that the claims of abuse and torture were exaggerated and involved only “criminals and terrorists.”
“There are dozens of people I know it happened to because it happened to me,” he said. Abu Ali was snatched during a raid in his Shia neighbourhood in mid-September and held for six weeks in a similar secret facility, where he and 20 other detainees were subjected to repeated torture.
Such violence, he insisted, was nothing unusual in the prison at a complex in central Baghdad known as the “security school” during the Saddam Hussein era.
“We were all tortured very badly,” he said. “I was handcuffed with my hands behind my back and then hanged from a hook in the ceiling. Then they tied a rope to my legs and pulled until I lost consciousness or my limbs were dislocated. Sometimes they electrocuted us by putting wires on our testicles. And then, of course, every day they would beat us.”
As Abu Ali recounted his story yesterday, Bayn Jabr, the Interior Minister and the senior official at the centre of the scandal, angrily denied on Iraqi television the allegations of systematic torture. He said that only five or six of 173 detainees had been badly harmed and they were among the country’s most dangerous terrorists.
Other officials have been more forthcoming about the extent of the abuse. Ali Kalib Khadher, the Deputy Minister for Police Affairs, blamed the “heritage of violence” left over from Saddam’s three decades in power. He added, however: “There has been much exaggeration about this issue. No one was beheaded, no one was killed.”
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-1876952,00.html
Such violence, he insisted, was nothing unusual in the prison at a complex in central Baghdad known as the “security school” during the Saddam Hussein era.
“We were all tortured very badly,” he said. “I was handcuffed with my hands behind my back and then hanged from a hook in the ceiling. Then they tied a rope to my legs and pulled until I lost consciousness or my limbs were dislocated. Sometimes they electrocuted us by putting wires on our testicles. And then, of course, every day they would beat us.”
As Abu Ali recounted his story yesterday, Bayn Jabr, the Interior Minister and the senior official at the centre of the scandal, angrily denied on Iraqi television the allegations of systematic torture. He said that only five or six of 173 detainees had been badly harmed and they were among the country’s most dangerous terrorists.
Other officials have been more forthcoming about the extent of the abuse. Ali Kalib Khadher, the Deputy Minister for Police Affairs, blamed the “heritage of violence” left over from Saddam’s three decades in power. He added, however: “There has been much exaggeration about this issue. No one was beheaded, no one was killed.”
More
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-1876952,00.html
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Interior Minister Bayn Jabr suggested some making the torture allegations were supporting the "insurgency". He added the Interior Ministry facility in the capital's Jadriyah district had held "dangerous terrorists," including one man accused of building six car bombs, he noted.
Jabr appeared with senior commanders to try to ease a crisis that grew Tuesday after Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, under pressure from the Americans, announced that 173 detainees had been located by American troops at the Jadriyah facility.
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http://www.albawaba.com/en/news/191519
The embassy also said the Iraqi government should not allow militia or sectarian control of the security forces.
The Americans also declared that American investigators would help conduct a much broader inquiry into all Iraqi detention centers. Together, the events showed that the United States still exerts vast influence over the Iraqi government, despite the Bush administration's insistence that Iraqis have full control over the affairs of their country.
At a news conference, the Iraqi interior minister, Bayan Jabr, a conservative Shiite, accused the government's political opponents of bolstering the insurgency by exploiting the American military's discovery of torture at a secret police prison in the heart of the capital. Virtually all of the prisoners were Sunni Arabs, and Sunni groups have exploded in fury, saying that the discovery confirms their long-held suspicions that the Shiite-led government has been abducting and torturing or killing Sunnis.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/17/international/middleeast/17cnd-Iraq.html?hp
Personnel from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Justice Department are in Baghdad now investigating Sunni Muslim allegations that detainees were tortured in a secret prison run by Iraq's Interior Ministry, State Department spokesman Gregg Sullivan said in an e-mail.
The discovery of the prison and Sunni assertions that all of the torture victims were members of their religious minority threaten to further strain Iraqi attempts at national unity. U.S. officials want such divisions to mend under a new constitution as the country heads toward legislative elections next month.
``We have made clear to the Iraqi government that there must not be militia or sectarian control or direction of Iraqi security forces, facilities or ministries,'' said a statement issued today by the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aCi0KcKBrn2w&refer=us
The Interior Minister, who is in charge of the facilities and security forces, said torture claims were exaggerated.
Sectarian rhetoric sharpened four days after U.S. troops found up to 173 malnourished detainees some showing signs of torture in an Interior Ministry building in the capital's Jadriyah district. Most were believed to be Sunni Arabs, the main group in the insurgency.
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http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1323711