WASHINGTON: An Iraqi search of a government jail in Baghdad operated by the Interior Ministry found 13 prisoners who had been subjected to serious abuse, The Washington Post reported on Monday.
An Iraqi official with firsthand knowledge of the search said at least 12 of the prisoners had suffered "severe torture," including electric shock, the newspaper said. "Two of them showed me their nails and they were gone," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The newspaper's Baghdad-datelined report cited an Iraqi Human Rights Ministry statement as saying 13 of the prisoners had required medical treatment and the findings would be "subject to an investigation."
| This is torture, and this is wrong. No doubt Andy Sullivan will manage to blame George Bush for it. |
The statement said 56 of the prisoners in the facility, inspected on Thursday, had been released immediately following the inspection and another 75 had been transferred to another facility.
A government spokesman, Laith Kubba, declined comment on the allegations that some prisoners in the facility operated by Interior Ministry special commandos had been tortured. The detention centre was the first examined as part of a government-ordered inquiry after US troops last month found another jail where cases of prisoner abuse have been confirmed by US and Iraqi officials.
Ibrahim Jaafari, one of the first to acknowledge that abuses had taken place at the prison, ordered the investigation, and the United Nations has also called for a thorough examination of prison conditions in Iraq, the Post reported. Lt Col Guy Rudisill, a spokesman for US military detention issues, said American authorities had already been aware that the prison searched on Thursday existed. US forces had not known about the previous facility. Prison inspectors from the Ministry of Human Rights and representatives of other ministries participated in the commando prison search, the ministry said in a statement. Authorities did not say whether any Americans were involved in the inquiry.
Investigators said they found 625 prisoners at the centre but declined to give details about them. US diplomatic and military officials said Iraqi officials were leading the investigation and declined to offer further comment. |