Friday, April 30, 2010
Baghdad prison (AP Photo: Karim Kadim)
Hundreds of Sunni men in Iraq were held without charge and tortured by the Shiite-controlled government for months in a secret facility, according to Human Rights Watch and media sources. Abuses included being hung upside-down, deprived of air, kicked, whipped, beaten, given electric shocks, sodomized with broomsticks and pistols, and raped.
At least 300 men were arrested between September and December in and around Mosul in Nineveh Province and sent to a secret facility at Al-Muthanna Airport in West Baghdad, where much of the torture took place. The men were later transferred to Al-Rusafa Detention Center, at which human rights officials were able to interview 42 of the detainees. The Muthanna prison was said to be controlled by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's military office.
Torture is an all too familiar horror in Iraq, following the Abu Ghraib scandal that tainted the American military occupation and the decades of abuse that security forces under former dictator Saddam Hussein inflicted at the same location and elsewhere.
As was the case with the Abu Ghraib torture, government officials (this time Iraqis) claimed the abuses were an aberration, while Human Rights Watch said such practices were “routine and systematic.”
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Iraq: Detainees Describe Torture in Secret Jail (Human Rights Watch)
Iraq 'Secret Prison' Inmates Allege Horrific Torture (by Gabriel Gatehouse, BBC News)
Secret Prison Revealed in Baghdad (by Ned Parker, Los Angeles Times)
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