Amnesty International today accused London of manipulating the human rights situation in Iraq to suit its own ends, after the British foreign office published a 24-page dossier of apparent systematic torture, arbitrary killings and ethnic persecution.
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A screen grab from
the video accompanying the British document |
The British report says eye gouging, piercing hands with electric drills, and suspending prisoners naked and blindfolded from ceilings are all among the torture techniques favored by president Saddam Hussein's regime.
"Saddam Hussein has been ruthless in his treatment of any opposition to him since his rise to power in 1979," the dossier alleged. "A cruel and callous disregard for human life and suffering remains the hallmark of the regime."
The dossier claims that Saddam's sons were personally involved in torture. Of Saddam's elder son, Udayy, the report said: "He has been frequently accused of serial rape and murder of young women.
"He maintained a private torture chamber, known as `al-Ghurfa al-Hamra' (the Red Room), disguised as an electricity installation, in a building on the banks of the Tigris.
"He personally executed dissidents in Basra during the uprising that followed the Gulf War in March 1991."
On Qusayy, the Iraq leader's younger son, the document said: "As head of the Iraqi internal security agencies, he has permitted and encouraged the endemic use of torture, including rape and the threat of rape, in Iraq."
A Foreign Office official said the report - accompanied by a fuzzy videotape of Shiites and Kurds being beaten, gassed and killed - was meant "to remind the world that abuses in Iraq extend far beyond weapons of mass destruction."
It comes six days ahead of Sunday's deadline - set by the UN Security Council - for Iraq to declare any of its programs to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, as UN arms inspectors continue to scour the country.
Chunks of the Foreign Office dossier were drawn from reports by Amnesty International, but its secretary general Ms Irene Khan criticized its content as "a cold and calculated manipulation of the work of human rights activists."
"Let us not forget that the same governments turned a blind eye to Amnesty International's reports of widespread human rights violations in Iraq before the Gulf War" in 1991, she said.
"They remained silent when thousands of unarmed Kurdish civilians were killed in Halabja in 1988."
Agencies