The New Iraq? Torture and ill-treatment of detainees in Iraqi custody

The New Iraq? Torture and ill-treatment of detainees in Iraqi custody

Considerable international attention has rightly focused on torture and other abuse inflicted on detainees by U.S. forces at Abu Ghraib and other detention facilities in Iraq. Accountability for these violations, and confidence that they are no longer occurring, has not been achieved. At the same time, far less attention has been focused on the treatment of persons in the custody of Iraqi authorities. In its February 2004 report to the U.S. government on conditions in 2003, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) found that Iraqi authorities had “allegedly whipped persons deprived of their liberty with cables on the back, kicked them in the lower parts of the body, including in the testicles, handcuffed and left them hanging from the iron bars of the cell windows or doors in painful positions for several hours at a time, and burned them with cigarettes (signs on bodies witnessed by ICRC delegates). Several persons deprived of their liberty alleged that they had been made to sign a statement that they had not been allowed to read.”2 Public follow-up on this issue has been insufficient.

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Human Rights Watch continues to receive reports of children being held together with adults in detention facilities under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Interior. The children include both criminal suspects and others suspected of having taken part in clashes against government forces, including those suspected of links with the Mahdi Army...

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"They held me on the seventh floor, in a cell with twenty-two adults. During interrogation they blindfolded me and tied my hands behind my back, and then beat me with cables and falaqa. [Testimony from Faisal , age 15]