UN accuses US forces of mistreating Iraqis

IRAQ: The United Nations' top human rights official yesterday accused US-led occupation forces in Iraq of mistreating many ordinary…

IRAQ: The United Nations' top human rights official yesterday accused US-led occupation forces in Iraq of mistreating many ordinary Iraqis and called for the appointment of an international ombudsman to monitor their behaviour.

Acting High Commissioner for Human Rights Mr Bertrand Ramcharan also suggested in a new report that US soldiers who had been accused of gross abuses at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison could be guilty of war crimes.

There had been "serious violations of human rights" under the Coalition Provisional Authority, including the jailing of large numbers of people "without anyone knowing how many, for what reasons . . . and how they were being treated", he said.

His report, for the UN's Human Rights Commission, quoted Iraqis interviewed by a team from his Geneva office telling of "arbitrary arrests and detention" being an ongoing phenomenon since US-led forces invaded the country.

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In a clear reference to the Abu Ghraib incidents, Mr Ramcharan said that "wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment" of detainees was a grave breach of international law.

Such acts, he added, "might be designated as war crimes by a competent tribunal".

The report accepted that the removal of the former regime of Saddam Hussein had to be considered a "major contribution to human rights in Iraq".

Saddam's government, most of whose members had now been arrested, "was a brutal, murderous, torturing gang that preyed on its own people . . . and committed shocking, systemic and criminal violations of human rights", the 45-page report stated.

"Everyone accepts the good intentions of the coalition as regards the behaviour of their forces in Iraq", the report stated. It added that Iraq "could now well be launched on the road to democracy, the rule of law and governance that is respectful of human rights".

However, it cited various reports of mistreatment by troops of Iraqi men, women and children and said that coalition forces in Iraq in effect had "immunity" from any impartial jurisdiction for wrongful acts and rights abuses.

It was a "stark reality" that there had been no international oversight of the situation there since the occupation.

Mr Ramcharan, a British-trained barrister from Guyana, said that to correct this the coalition should appoint an "international ombudsman or commissioner on human rights".

The report was criticised by Reed Brody, special counsel to the US-based Human Rights Watch organisation.

"It seems very light, and to bend over backwards to accept the good faith of the US," he said. "I don't think it is the place of the UN human rights office to evaluate the intentions of a state or group of states."