BAGHDAD: Tens of thousands of detainees are being held without trial in Iraqi prisons and face violent and psychological abuse as well as other forms of mistreatment, Amnesty International said Monday.
The London-based human rights watchdog estimates 30,000 people are held in Iraqi jails, noting several are known to have died in custody, while cataloguing physical and psychological abuses against others.
"Iraq’s security forces have been responsible for systematically violating detainees’ rights and they have been permitted to do so with impunity," said Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa director Malcolm Smart.
"The Iraqi authorities must take the firm and decisive action now… to show that they have the political will to uphold the human rights of all Iraqis, in accordance with their international obligations and to stop the torture and other gross abuses of detainees’ rights."
Amnesty’s 59-page report, titled "New Order, Same Abuses: Unlawful detentions and torture in Iraq," lists several men who were subjected to torture or who died in prison.
Among them was Riad Mohammed Saleh al-Oqaibi, arrested in September 2009 and held in a detention facility in Baghdad’s heavily-fortified Green Zone before being transferred to a secret detention facility in the capital.
"During interrogation, he is said to have been beaten so hard on the chest that his ribs were broken and his liver damaged," the report said.
"He died on 12 or 13 February as a result of internal bleeding."
According to the rights group, methods of torture used have included beatings with cables and hosepipes, breaking of limbs, piercing of the body with drills and psychological torture in the form of threats of rape.
It said security forces in the autonomous region of Kurdistan were also at fault, noting one case in which a detainee had been held for more than 10 years without charge or trial and was allegedly tortured by Kurdish security police.
Iraq’s fractured penal system means the ministries of justice, interior and defense all run their own prisons, and reports of torture and mistreatment are not uncommon.
Human Rights Watch said in April that Iraqi men were raped, electrocuted and beaten in a "secret prison" in Baghdad, while MPs called for an independent inquiry into prison abuse in a parliamentary debate in June 2009.
Baghdad took over full responsibility for prisons in the country in J
uly, with the United States only responsible for a small section of high-value detainees in Karkh Prison on the capital’s outskirts.
At a ceremony on July 15 when Iraq took control of the last remaining US detention facility here, Iraqi Justice Minister Dara Nureddine Dara said "the days of mistreatment and abuse of prisoners are gone."
"We will investigate and discharge anyone found to have committed a wrongful act," he said.
Amnesty noted while Iraq had announced inquiries into cases of maltreatment, torture and death in custody, the probe results had not been made public and "those responsible for abuses have not been brought to justice."
It also criticized the United States for handing over several thousand detainees to Iraqi custody "without any guarantees against torture or ill-treatment."
Security forces in Iraq retain broad powers to arrest individuals on the basis of tip-offs from informants, and Amnesty said torture is often used to extract confessions from those being held.
US diplomats here have said in the past that Iraq’s judicial system remains highly dependent on confessions from suspects at this point, rather than forensics or evidence.
