Amnesty: 30,000 Held in Iraq without Due Process; Evidence of Abuse

[unhappycamper]

Amnesty: 30,000 Held in Iraq without Due Process; Evidence of Abuse
Posted on September 14, 2010 by Juan

Every time there is an election in Iraq, as happened last March 7, the Neoconservatives come out to crow about how great the Iraq War was. Their implicit argument is that Iraq was a brutal dictatorship, is now a thriving democracy. This argument is typical of their warped ethics, since it maintains that the ends justifies the means, and we are not supposed to bring up the dead, the wounded, the damaged that the Neocons have inflicted on Iraq. Never mind that the elections have not so far produced a viable new government. Never mind that democratic institutions are weak or non-existent. Never mind that widespread abuses are committed against the public by the new state.

Amnesty International reports that the Iraqi government is holding some 30,000 prisoners without charges or due process. In some instances the prisoners have been abused or even tortured. About 10,000 of these prisoners were recently handed over to the Iraqis when the US combat mission in Iraq supposedly ended.

Amnesty raises questions as to whether the US military hand-over of Iraqi prisoners to Baghdad authorities was illegal, given that US officers must have known their prisoners might be abused if transferred.

Allegations of arrests without due process continue today. The Iraqi National News Agency reports that a member of the Basra governing council has accused Iraqi authorities of making large numbers of arbitrary arrests of members of the Sadr Trend, loyal to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, in recent days.

~snip~

The report implicates not only the Baghdad government and security forces but also the Kurdistan Regional Government and its Asayish security forces, who it says have been holding some detainees without trial for many years.