THIRTY THOUSAND prisoners are being held in Iraq without charge or trial, denied legal representation, tortured, killed and disappeared, Amnesty International has reported.
The human rights organisation argues in a 56-page report, New Order, Same Abuses: Unlawful Detention and Torture in Iraq, that prisoners “rights violations by US and Iraqi forces can be compared with treatment of detainees under the ousted Baathist regime, known for brutality and cruelty. Since 2009, the US has transferred 10,000 detainees it was holding to the Iraqi authorities “without any guarantees against torture or ill-treatment.”
Iraqis are seized and detained for long periods without judicial warrants, jailed with the aim of extorting money from their families, or held on false accusations. Many have no contact with the outside world. Prisoners have no access to lawyers or are denied private consultations with lawyers.
Detainees are shifted around numerous facilities scattered throughout the country, making it difficult to track them. Two secret prisons have been exposed: the first in the Jadriya district of Baghdad where 168 men were held in appalling conditions and tortured, the second at a military airport where 400 men were brutalised. Iraqis die or go missing while in custody.
Four Iraqis imprisoned at Guantánamo in Cuba were repatriated by force to Iraq where they were rearrested. Torturers and abusers are occasionally arrested, but most are amnestied and freed while senior officials enjoy immunity from prosecution.
Amnesty says torture is commonplace, including in a prison in the US and Iraqi government headquarters in Baghdad’s Green Zone. Electric shocks, rape or threat of rape, beatings, breaking bones and piercing bodies with drills occur, particularly after arrest in order to extract confessions to be presented in court. The Iraqi justice system relies heavily on coerced confessions.
Amnesty says the vast majority of detainees are Sunnis although several thousand inmates were members of the Mahdi Army militia headed by anti-occupation Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr who led two revolts against the occupa- tion. Most prisoners are being held on terrorism-related offences on the basis of a 2005 law that, Amnesty states, “contains an overly broad definition of terrorism” which can be “used to muzzle peaceful opposition” to the government.
This law has also “increased the number of capital offences by prescribing the death penalty for those who provoke, plan, finance or support others [who] commit terrorist acts”. A 2008 amnesty law providing for a review procedure and the release of prisoners jailed illegally or for minor offences has been ignored, Amnesty charges. Although the government of prime minister Nuri al-Maliki ratified in 2008 the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, this has also been ignored.
Since 2007, the International Committee of the Red Cross has visited 25,000 prisoners held in 35 facilities run by Iraqi ministries of justice, defence and interior.
