US and Iraqi inspectors say they have found new evidence of abuse in detention centres run by Iraq's interior ministry. In November, US soldiers said they found 173 incarcerated men in a secret interior ministry bunker, some of them emaciated and showing signs of torture.Bayan Baqir Solagh Jabir, the Iraqi interior minister, played down the findings at the time, saying a handful of people had merely been beaten. Since then, at least six joint US-Iraqi inspections have found abused detainees in several other detention centres, the Washington Post reported on Monday. A US official involved in the inspections said the Iraqi detainees had "numerous bruises on the arms, legs and feet".
"A lot of the Iraqis had separated shoulders and problems with their hands and fingers too. You could also see strap marks on some of their backs," he said. The abused captives found during the November 13 raid were transferred to a separate detention centre to protect them from further harm, but most detainees at centres subsequently inspected were not.