New 48 Page Report Finds Endless Human Rights Violations in Iraq

[kpete]

New Report Finds Endless Human Rights Violations in Iraq

Amnesty International released a new 48-page report compiled from interviews with ex-inmates across Iraq. The report titled, "Beyond Abu Ghraib: Detention and Torture in Iraq", documents wide-spread torture and shows that thousands of Iraqis are still being held without charge or trial. Iraq's human rights minister, Nermeen Othman said the interior ministry admits abuses have been widespread. The report demands multinational forces and Iraqi authorities take urgent steps to stop abuses if there is to be any hope of halting Iraq's sectarian violence.
http://www.airamericaradio.com/node/1650


6 March 2006

Beyond Abu Ghraib:
detention and torture in Iraq


"I have lost a year and a half of my life"
43-year-old former security detainee and father of three daughters following his release in September 2005; he alleged that he was ill-treated while held in US detention in Iraq.

Introduction

Nearly three years after United States (US) and allied forces invaded Iraq and toppled the government of Saddam Hussain, the human rights situation in the country remains dire. The deployment of US-led forces in Iraq and the armed response that engendered has resulted in thousands of deaths of civilians and widespread abuses amid the ongoing conflict.

As Amnesty International has reported elsewhere(1), many of the abuses occurring today are committed by armed groups opposed to the US-led Multinational Force (MNF) and the Iraqi government that it underpins. Armed groups continue to wage an uncompromising war marked by their disregard for civilian lives and the basic rules of international humanitarian law. They commit suicide and other bomb attacks which either target civilians or while aimed at military objectives are disproportionate in terms of causing civilian casualties, and they abduct and hold victims hostage, threatening and often taking their lives. Amnesty International condemns these abuses, some of which are so egregious as to constitute crimes against humanity, in addition to war crimes, and continues to call on Iraq’s armed groups to cease such activities and abide by basic requirements of international humanitarian law.

In this report, Amnesty International focuses on another part of the equation, specifically its concerns about human rights abuses for which the US-led MNF is directly responsible and those which are increasingly being committed by Iraqi security forces. The record of these forces, including US forces and their United Kingdom (UK) allies, is an unpalatable one. Despite the pre-war rhetoric and post-invasion justifications of US and UK political leaders, and their obligations under international law, from the outset the occupying forces attached insufficient weight to human rights considerations. This remains the position even if the violations by the MNF that are the subject of this report do not have the same graphic, shock quality as the images that emerged in April 2004 and February 2006 showing inmates being tortured and humiliated by US guards at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison and Iraqi youth being beaten by UK troops after they were apprehended during a riot. The same failure to ensure due process that prevailed then, however, and facilitated - perhaps even encouraged such abuses – is evidenced today by the continuing detentions without charge or trial of thousands of people in Iraq who are classified by the MNF as "security internees".

The MNF has established procedures which deprive detainees of human rights guaranteed in international human rights law and standards. In particular, the MNF denies detainees their right to challenge the lawfulness of their detention before a court. Some of the detainees have been held for over two years without any effective remedy or recourse; others have been released without explanation or apology or reparation after months in detention, victims of a system that is arbitrary and a recipe for abuse.

...................
lots more at:
http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGMDE140012006

[f-bush]

1. A paraphrase of Joe Welch:

Mr. Bush have you no decency?



What have we become? In a few short years, we have descended into being a criminal nation. These idiots in the White House have got to be stopped!

[hootinholler]

2. !

:kick: