Rights Group Says Torture by Iraq Routine (no change from Saddam)

[papau]

http://www.latimes.com/services/site/premium/access-registered.intercept
THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ
Rights Group Says Torture by Iraq Routine
From Reuters

January 25, 2005

BAGHDAD — Iraqi authorities routinely torture prisoners, a leading human rights group said in a report released today, asserting that the ousting of President Saddam Hussein had not ended systematic abuse.

Prisoners have been beaten with cables and hoses and given electric shocks to their earlobes and genitals, U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said. Some have been deprived of food and water and crammed into standing-room-only cells.

"The people of Iraq were promised something better than this after the government of Saddam Hussein fell," said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the group's Middle East and North Africa Division.

Human Rights Watch said it interviewed 90 Iraqi prisoners between July and October, just after the government of interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi assumed power, backed by the U.S.-led forces that toppled Hussein. Seventy-two said they had been tortured or mistreated.

Iraq's justice minister did not challenge the report, saying it would be unrealistic to expect a flawless judicial system in a war-torn country such as Iraq.

[papau]

1. Pentagon Files Reveal More Allegations of Abuse in Iraq

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-abuse25jan25,1,4123349.story?coll=la-headlines-world
THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ
Pentagon Files Reveal More Allegations of Abuse in Iraq
Documents contain descriptions of severe detainee mistreatment beyond Abu Ghraib.
By John Hendren
Times Staff Writer

January 25, 2005

WASHINGTON — Pentagon documents released Monday disclosed that Iraqi prisoners had lodged dozens of abuse complaints against U.S. and Iraqi personnel who guarded them at a little-known palace in Baghdad converted to a U.S. prison. Among the allegations was that guards had sodomized a disabled man and killed his brother, whose dying body was tossed into a cell, atop his sister.

The documents, obtained in a lawsuit against the federal government by the American Civil Liberties Union, suggest for the first time that numerous detainees were abused at Adhamiya Palace, one of Saddam Hussein's villas in eastern Baghdad that was used by his son Uday. Previous cases of abuse of Iraqi prisoners have focused mainly on Abu Ghraib prison.

A government contractor who was interviewed by U.S. investigators said that as many as 90 incidents of possible abuse took place at the palace, but only a few were detailed in the hundreds of pages of documents released Monday.

The documents also touch on alleged abuses in other U.S.-run lockups in Iraq. The papers include investigative reports linking some abuses to ultrasecret Pentagon counter-terrorism units.

The latest allegations add to a pattern that human rights activists said suggested systematic abuse of prisoners at U.S. military detention facilities across the globe. ACLU officials, who have obtained and released thousands of documents in recent months, on Monday accused the Pentagon of a "woefully inadequate" response to hundreds of incidents of alleged abuse. <snip>