AMMAN, June 20: The London-based human rights group Amnesty International said on Friday that more than 2,000 prisoners were being held by coalition forces in Iraq, many in “bad conditions”.

“There are more than 2,000 detainees.

“Some of them are officials of the former government, some were arrested on suspicion of carrying out or planning acts of aggression against coalition forces and others on criminal charges,” Amnesty deputy director for the Middle East Abdul Salam Sidahmed said in Amman.

“The common factor between all these prisoners is that we don’t know their legal framework or status, the exact charges against them, while all of them do not have access to their families and legal representation,” he said.

Sidahmed, who just returned from Iraq, was in Amman to promote an Amnesty report warning against exacerbating human rights abuses in Iraq as reconstruction gets underway, at the World Economic Forum which opens on Saturday.

The reports charges that the “notorious Abu Ghraib prison, centre of torture and mass executions under Saddam Hussein, is yet again a prison cut off from the outside world”.

Sidahmeh said Amnesty has had no access to the prisoners, let alone their guards, but has interviewed some former detainees who “have alleged bad treatment, and in some cases torture by arresting authorities” namely US forces.

“We couldn’t verify these allegations, however it is very clear the conditions of detention are really bad,” he said.

“People arrested near the airport are kept in tents and the burning heat, with little water, food and in most of the cases they were ... handcuffed with plastic handcuffs tied behind their backs,” he said. “Some of the people we interviewed still have marks of handcuffs on their wrists,” added the official of the prisoners’ rights group.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Thursday that it had visited 6,125 prisoners of war and civilians held by coalition forces in Iraq, including former members of Saddam’s regime.

IMAM CHARGES: A Sunni Muslim prayer leader charged Friday that US forces were opening Iraq up to “the Jews” and chided Iraqis working as “brokers” for the Jewish infiltrators, as the chief US civilian administrator said the country needed an economic overhaul in order to flourish.

And British member of parliament George Galloway, accused of being in the pay of Saddam Hussein, demanded an official inquiry after a US newspaper admitted that documents detailing the claim were almost certainly forged.

European Union leaders meanwhile said the United Nations should have an important role in the formation of a post-war Iraqi government.

Sheikh Mahmud Khalaf, a Sunni Muslim prayer leader, said the US-led invasion was part of a Jewish conspiracy.

“The liberation of which they spoke boils down to liberating Iraq from its Arab Muslim people ... so that the Jews can enter it,” he said at the main Friday prayers in a Baghdad mosque.

“The Jews, civilian and military people, are now entering Iraq ... buying property, factories and companies while Iraqis work for them as brokers and guides,” he said.—AFP