US Winked at "Continued" Torture at Iraqi Jails: Official

"We set a precedent and we were given guidance, but for some reason it is not being followed," said the US official in an e-mail to The Washington Post, which revealed fresh abuses of prisoners by Iraqi troops.

"I was not in charge of the team who went to the sites. If so, I would have taken them out," he said in his e-mail excerpts of which were published by the mass-circulation American daily on Monday, April 24 .

The Post said only a handful of the most severely abused detainees at a single site were removed for medical treatment.

Last November, more than 170 malnourished and beaten prisoners, many of them Sunni Arabs, were found locked in a bunker belonging to the interior ministry.

At the insistence of US officials, Iraq agreed to the joint inspections of what the United States said would be all of Iraq's more than1 ,000 detention centers.

Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pledged in November that US troops would attempt to stop inhumane treatment of prisoners if they saw it.

An Iraqi official familiar with the joint inspections told the Post that the Americans initially said they would suspend their policy of removing prisoners from sites where abuse was found until after Iraq's national elections, which were held December15 , because disclosures of Interior Ministry abuses were politically sensitive.

The elections came and went, the official said, and the Americans continued leaving detainees at sites that held bruised, burned and limping prisoners.

US occupation forces in Iraq drew international criticism for abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.

The Abu Ghraib scandal gained international notoriety in 2004 after the CBS news network published several graphic photos of Iraqi detainees tortured and sexually abused by American soldiers at the Baghdad-based prison.

Torture Continuing

The US official said the joint US-Iraqi inspection team found fresh abuses in detention facilities basically in Baghdad.

"Numerous bruises on the arms, legs and feet. A lot of the Iraqis had separated shoulders and problems with their hands and fingers too. You could also see strap marks on some of their backs," he said, describing in his e-mail the grisly scenes during the visits that took place in February.

The US official said the visits included at least five detention centers run by the Interior Ministry and a sixth controlled by the Defense Ministry.

Prisoners at three of those sites were being held by the Wolf Brigades, one of the Interior Ministry commando forces accused of targeting Sunnis.

Lt. Col. Kevin Curry, spokesman for US detention operations, confirmed in a statement to the Post that torture continued in Iraqi jails after the November raid.

"The signs of abuse included broken bones, indications that they had been beaten with hoses and wires, signs that they had been hung from the ceiling, and cigarette burns," he said.

He said other signs included missing toenails, dislocated shoulders and severe bruising.

"At the time of the inspection, most of the apparent injuries were months old; however, there were indications that three cases of abuse occurred within a week of the inspection," Curry added.

Muntazar Al-Samarrai, an interior ministry's whistle-blower who was in charge of a special forces unit, accused outgoing Interior Minister Bayan Jabr Solagh and senior officials at his ministry of condoning torture and abuses of detainees.

The Interior Ministry, whose forces are overwhelmingly Shiite, has also been accused by Sunni Arabs and US officials of operating death squads that target Sunni men.

http://islamonline.net/English/News/2006-04/24/article03.shtml