Raid reveals secret Iraqi 'torture' jail

One hundred and seventy-three men and teenage boys were recently discovered in a secret prison beneath an Iraqi government building. Some of the inmates were reportedly tortured, beaten and starved. The prisoners were found when US and Iraqi troops surrounded and took control of an Interior Ministry building in the Jadriyah neighborhood of Baghdad on Nov. 13. When US forces arrived, officials said that only 40 detainees were being held. But as troops moved through the building, opening door after door, they found scores of prisoners, many in very poor health. The troops had apparently been tipped off to the prison's existence by relatives of those being detained there. The raid on the Interior Ministry bunker took place after Iraqi police called in US help when their search for a missing 15-year-old boy took them to the ministry dungeons at Jadriyah, one of many unofficial prisons. The building is said to have been used by one of the Shia militias, the Badr Brigade, which has links to the government. US Brigadier General Karl Horst of the 3rd Infantry Division, who was involved in the operation, said the prisoners were "in need of medical care." The Iraqi police were more forthcoming. "These men were in a very bad way. They have obviously been tortured, some had been there a long time and they were very frightened," said an officer calling himself Yasin. He would not give any other name: "I don't want to end up in one of these rooms myself," he said. The Deputy Interior Minister, Hussein Kamal, who saw some of the abuse victims, said: "I've never seen such a situation like this during the past two years in Baghdad. This is the worst. I saw signs of physical abuse by brutal beating. One or two detainees were paralyzed and some had their skin peeled off various parts of their bodies." Seif Saad, an Iraqi guard at the prison, said the guards "placed sacks on [the prisoners'] heads and tied their hands behind their backs." Saad, 18, a former laborer with no police training, denied the arrests were religiously motivated. He told a Reuters reporter the suspects had been brought in for questioning in connection with bombings, regardless of whether they were Sunni, Shia or Kurd. The reporter said Saad wore a special forces uniform resembling that of a Shia paramilitary group. Four days following the raid on the prison, graphic photographs of injuries allegedly suffered by the detainees surfaced. The images, released by the Sunni Committee of Muslim Scholars, show men with bruises and welts covering their bodies. Mohammad Duham, the head of a group that works to protect prisoners and detainees, told Reuters that "torture implements" had been found in the bunker, including saws to cut limbs. Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said that there would be an investigation into allegations that Interior Ministry officials had tortured detainees held in the basement prison in connection with the mostly Sunni insurgency. "I was informed that there were 173 detainees held at an Interior Ministry prison and they appear to be malnourished," al-Jaafari said. "There is also some talk that they were subjected to some kind of torture." He said that the detainees had been moved to another location and were receiving medical care. US military officials refused to comment on their role in bringing the secret prison to light, referring all questions to the Interior Ministry. The United Nations called for an international investigation into the conditions of detainees in Iraq following the discovery of the prison. Louise Arbour, the UN high commissioner for human rights, called for an urgent inquiry on Nov. 18, emphasizing that the investigating body should be multinational in character. "In light of the apparently systemic nature and magnitude of that problem, and the importance of public confidence in any inquiry, I urge authorities to consider calling for an international inquiry," she said. UN special envoy on torture, Manfred Novak, also called for an independent inquiry. He said he had received various allegations of torture and degrading treatment by both US and Iraqi forces in Iraq. "That torture is still practiced in Iraq after Saddam Hussein is no secret," he said. Ayad al-Samarrai, a senior official with the Iraqi Islamic party, a mainstream Sunni group, said his organization had made complaints about the illegal arrest and abuse of Sunni Muslims by government paramilitary forces over the past six months. "We submitted our claims to the government, to the Ministry of Interior, to the multinational forces, to the Iraqi army. We were saying this for many months before this prison was found," he said. The party wanted an independent Iraqi inquiry established, with support from the US military and perhaps the UN, but with the powers to enter interior ministry buildings to investigate the widely reported accounts of abuse and torture. He said officials from Iraq's human rights ministry had tried to investigate but had been refused access by the powerful interior ministry. "All those who were released from this prison were Sunnis," Samarrai said. "It looks like part of a plan to make this community terrified, or to push them to leave Iraq or to leave their homes, or to force them into violence as they will think it is the only way to protect themselves." An Iraqi law student said he had been among those detained at the interior ministry. He had been arrested in August and released six weeks ago. Interviewed by Reuters at a Sunni party office, the 22-year-old said he had been blindfolded, his hands bound and hung from a ceiling hook. He was whipped with metal cables. "They called us Sunni dogs and thieves or friends of Saddam Hussein." He said he had been in a room with 100 others, and that sometimes the captors used drills against people. "They put me in a barrel full of cold water during questioning and gave me electric shocks," he said. He said life was so tough that prisoners prayed for a transfer to the notorious US-run Abu Ghraib prison. Stephen Bowen, an Amnesty International UK campaigns director, said of the discovery of the prison: "This is by no means the first time that we've encountered cases of detainees apparently being tortured by members of the interior ministry–a grisly pattern is emerging. It's tragic that after years of documenting torture, killings and incommunicado detention under Saddam, we are talking about the same issues in the same country–with different perpetrators." The discovery of an illegal detention center has raised even more questions over the behavior of the security forces in Iraq, which are ostensibly being primed to take over duties from a withdrawing coalition force. It also revived memories of how the security forces behaved under Saddam Hussein, who routinely had people arrested and tortured at secret prisons and detention centers in and around Baghdad, many of which were not discovered until after his regime had fallen. Although US forces had ridden to the rescue on this occasion, many of these units have been created, trained and armed by the US. Three billion dollars out of an $87 billion Iraq appropriation that Congress approved last year was earmarked to create special units to fight the insurgency. Vincent Cannistraro, the CIA's former head of counter-terrorism, said: "They set up little teams of [Navy] Seals and special forces with teams of Iraqis, working with people who were in senior intelligence under the Saddam regime." Another of his charges, that "they're clearly cooking up joint teams to [do] Phoenix-type things, like they did in Vietnam," has drawn protestations of outrage from the US military. The CIA's Phoenix program targeted and assassinated Vietcong suspects and alleged sympathizers. Iraqi politicians in the new regime have repeatedly accused the CIA of refusing to hand over control of the recreated Iraqi intelligence service to the Iraqi government. And the paramilitaries are run by Adnan Thabit, allegedly a former CIA asset. Many of the abuse allegations made by Sunni leaders are against the 2,000-strong Wolf Brigade, which was formed in October 2004 after training with US forces. It first saw action during the widespread disturbances in Mosul last year. The Wolf Brigade is led by a 41-year-old former lieutenant general in Saddam's army going by the nom de guerre of Abul Waleed. He has a poster of the Shia saint Imam Ali on his wall and a Koranic chant as his mobile telephone ring tone. He began the practice of videotaping arrested suspects. This became a successful television show, Terrorism in the Grip of Justice, in which alleged insurgents confess to crimes ranging from murders to rapes. Waleed says his men do not make mistakes that US soldiers have made. "When we raid a house, we respect the house. We respect the women of the house," he said. "We don't take a father in front of his child. We are Iraqis, we know what is expected of us." The Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars disagrees. "Forces like them carry out illegal killings and arrests. They intimidate people," said a spokesman. "They are Iraqi government forces, but they do not protect the people. We need to be protected from them."