US to Iraq govt: abuse won’t be tolerated: Militia ‘control of army’ disapproved of
BAGHDAD, Nov 17: Washington will not tolerate prisoner abuse in Iraq or the infiltration of security forces by militias, US officials said on Thursday, laying down the law even as Iraqi officials downplayed allegations of detainees being tortured.
“We strongly condemn mistreatment of detainees anywhere,” the US embassy in Baghdad said.
US officials “have made it clear to the Iraqi government that there must not be militia or sectarian control or direction of (Iraq’s army and police), facilities or ministries”, it said.
“Detainee abuse is not and will not be tolerated by either the Iraqi government or the (US-led coalition) forces in Iraq.”
“Even one case (of abuse) is too much, anywhere, at any place and any time in Iraq,” said James Bullock, an embassy spokesman. “That’s our policy.”
The statement came shortly after Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Baqer Solagh said at a televised press conference that claims of prisoners being beaten, tortured and starved at a Baghdad secret prison were ‘exaggerated’.
US forces on Sunday raided the prison and found 169 detainees in need of water, food and medical attention.
According to Solagh, the site was an official detention centre which held some of the ‘most dangerous terrorists’. The prison was well known and ‘isn’t run by Badr or by Iranian agents’.
The Badr Organization is an Iranian-supported Shia militia formed during the 1980-1988 war with Iraq. It is the armed wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), one of the main governing parties.
Badr members are widely suspected to have infiltrated Iraq’s security forces.
The Shia-led government has launched an investigation into the case, which triggered an international outcry. Sunnis, not trusting the government to investigate itself, have called for an international probe.
Solagh said there were seven cases of torture out of the total number of inmates at the Baghdad prison, adding: “Those responsible will be held accountable”.
He said there had been “much exaggeration about this issue” and described the detainees as “criminals and terrorists”.
“Among them there are Arabs. Here are their identity cards and passports. They are the most dangerous terrorists,” the interior minister said, waving a stack of passports.
“I will punish those responsible for this detention centre if it is proved that they are responsible for any violations.”
And not all detainees were Sunnis: at least one Shia responsible for four car bombings which killed 66 people was among those being held. Everyone being held had been detained lawfully, he added.
General Rick Lynch, spokesman for the US-lead coalition forces in Iraq, said that some of those 169 individuals they found “looked like they had been abused, malnourished and mistreated”.
US troops took control of the site, then moved the inmates “to the Abu Ghraib detention facility, where they were given appropriate medical treatment”.
Last year, the US military was rocked by its own prisoner abuse scandal at the US-run Abu Ghraib, located west of Baghdad.
The latest case has prompted sharp domestic and international criticism.
British Defence Minister John Reid described the abuse of detainees as ‘totally unacceptable’, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he was ‘deeply concerned’, and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said such abuse would not help stabilize the country.
The Committee of Muslim Scholars, the main Sunni religious organization in Iraq, has accused “interior ministry services of resorting to torture and ransoming prisoners”.
Meanwhile a US soldier was killed in a road crash on Thursday in northern Iraq, becoming the 12th American serviceman to die in the country over a three-day period, the US military said.
The latest death brings to at least 2,081 the number of US military personnel killed in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion, according to an AFP tally based on the independent Iraq Coalition Casualty Count.
Separately, Baghdad filed a request for Yemen to extradite one of Saddam Hussein’s nephews to face trial on terrorism charges.—AFP
