Amnesty accuses US of torture

Amnesty Report: Amnesty International yesterday accused the US and its allies of abusing and torturing prisoners in Iraq nearly three years after toppling the Baathist regime.

In its report, Beyond Abu Ghraib: Detention and Torture In Iraq, the human rights monitoring organisation called the situation "dire", and said lessons had not been learnt from the 2004 scandal at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison.

While Amnesty International previously characterised abuses committed by insurgents as war crimes and crimes against humanity, this 48-page document focuses on US, multi-national and Iraqi forces holding 14,000 prisoners at four jails and numerous military facilities, the majority held by US forces.

The record, says Amnesty, "is an upalatable one" because "from the outset the occupying forces attached insufficient weight to human rights considerations".

It says due process is not applied although prisoners are, under Iraqi law, meant to appear before a judge within 24 hours of incarceration. Those held for 60 days without surfacing are often tortured.

Detainees are deprived of their human rights, held indefinitely without charges, denied access to lawyers and family, and released without explanation or compensation.

Although the authorities are obliged to grant the inter- national committee of the Red Cross access to all prisoners, this is not observed in practice.

Relatives resort to human rights organisations to trace missing or arrested persons who can be held far from their homes.

Amnesty says the system is "arbitrary and ripe for abuse". The majority of Iraqi detainees are either innocent or legal cases cannot be made against them.

Between August 2004 and November 2005, the files of 21,999 detainees were reviewed.

Some 4,426 were freed unconditionally, 7,626 were released to a guarantor and 9,903 kept in prison. By November 2005, only 1,301 suspected insurgents had been tried.

Since the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, the US has jailed "high-value" prisoners at the international airport, mostly members of the former regime against whom no charges have been brought. Two died in detention while several were released without charge.

The US also holds undocumented or "ghost" detainees who may be taken out of the country or "disappeared".

The fate of prisoners in US and multinational custody ultimately rests with military commanders rather than judges.

Troops are not prosecuted promptly for abuses, and sentences do not reflect the gravity of their crimes.

US and multinational forces hand detainees over to Iraqi security agencies known to systematically mistreat detainees.

To extract confession they are beaten, hung by the arms, tied in painful positions, subjected to electric shocks, burnt and have their finger nails torn out and bones broken. People arrested by Iraqi police and soldiers are often executed.

Amnesty recommends that the occupying forces should end all indefinite imprisonment, detainees should be held only in recognised prisons, and be brought without delay before judges with lawyers present.

Unhindered access should be guaranteed to all places of detention.

Complaints and reports of torture and abuse should be investigated, officials suspected of ill-treating detainees should be suspended, complainants and witnesses should be protected and those responsible for human rights violations should be brought to justice in fair trials.

Iraq's acting human rights minister Nirmeen Othman responded to the claims by saying: "We know that there is abuse."

He said two committees were investigating mistreatment.

While one was constituted last November and the other recently, neither have produced their findings.