[Mb-civic] Inspectors Find More Torture at Iraqi Jails - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Inspectors Find More Torture at Iraqi Jails
Top General's Pledge To Protect Prisoners 'Not Being Followed'

By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, April 24, 2006; A01

BAGHDAD -- Last Nov. 13, U.S. soldiers found 173 incarcerated men, some 
of them emaciated and showing signs of torture, in a secret bunker in an 
Interior Ministry compound in central Baghdad. The soldiers immediately 
transferred the men to a separate detention facility to protect them 
from further abuse, the U.S. military reported.

Since then, there have been at least six joint U.S.-Iraqi inspections of 
detention centers, most of them run by Iraq's Shiite Muslim-dominated 
Interior Ministry. Two sources involved with the inspections, one Iraqi 
official and one U.S. official, said abuse of prisoners was found at all 
the sites visited through February. U.S. military authorities confirmed 
that signs of severe abuse were observed at two of the detention centers.

But U.S. troops have not responded by removing all the detainees, as 
they did in November. Instead, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials, 
only a handful of the most severely abused detainees at a single site 
were removed for medical treatment. Prisoners at two other sites were 
removed to alleviate overcrowding. U.S. and Iraqi authorities left the 
rest where they were.

This practice of leaving the detainees in place has raised concerns that 
detainees now face additional threats. It has also prompted fresh 
questions from the inspectors about whether the United States has 
honored a pledge by Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint 
Chiefs of Staff, that U.S. troops would attempt to stop inhumane 
treatment if they saw it.

Pace said at a news conference Nov. 29 with Defense Secretary Donald H. 
Rumsfeld, "It is absolutely the responsibility of every U.S. service 
member, if they see inhumane treatment being conducted, to intervene to 
stop it." Turning to Pace, Rumsfeld responded: "I don't think you mean 
they have an obligation to physically stop it; it's to report it."

"If they are physically present when inhumane treatment is taking place, 
sir, they have an obligation to try to stop it," Pace answered.

The Iraqi official familiar with the joint inspections said detainees 
who are not moved to other facilities are left vulnerable. "They tell 
us, 'If you leave us here, they will kill us,' " said the Iraqi 
official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because, he said, he and 
other Iraqis involved with inspections had received death threats.

The U.S. official involved in the inspections, who would not be 
identified by name, described in an e-mail the abuse found during some 
of the visits since the Nov. 13 raid: "Numerous bruises on the arms, 
legs and feet. A lot of the Iraqis had separated shoulders and problems 
with their hands and fingers too. You could also see strap marks on some 
of their backs."

"I was not in charge of the team who went to the sites. If so, I would 
have taken them out," the U.S. official wrote, referring to the 
detainees. "We set a precedent and we were given guidance" from the 
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "but for some reason it is not 
being followed."

Maj. Gen. John D. Gardner, the commander of U.S. detention operations in 
Iraq, said in an interview, "I would strongly disagree with the 
statement that Americans are seeing cases of abuse and not doing anything."

The issue goes to the heart of U.S. relations with the Iraqi government, 
which is led by Shiite religious parties. The Interior Ministry, whose 
forces are overwhelmingly Shiite, has been accused by Sunni Arabs and 
U.S. officials of operating death squads that target Sunni men. 
Increasingly, Interior Ministry forces are being accused of other crimes 
as well, including kidnapping for ransom. The Interior Ministry forces 
have also been accused of deferring to militias belonging to the Shiite 
religious parties, from whose ranks many of Iraq's police commandos and 
other ministry forces are drawn.

The Iraqi government says the cases of abuse, illegal detention and 
killings by the Shiite death squads are few, and it denies involvement 
in kidnappings. The U.S. military has said it is devoting 2006 to 
building up and reforming Iraq's police forces.

After the Nov. 13 disclosures, the highest-ranking U.S. officials in 
Iraq -- Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr. -- 
issued rare public rebukes to their Iraqi government allies.

At the insistence of U.S. officials, Iraq agreed to the joint 
inspections of what the United States said would be all of Iraq's more 
than 1,000 detention centers.

The two sources involved in the joint inspections said the visits after 
November included an Interior Ministry detention center in Baghdad, 
which was inspected twice; a Defense Ministry site near the Green Zone; 
an Interior Ministry site in the city of Kut; an Interior Ministry site 
in the Muthanna neighborhood of Baghdad; and a "maximum crimes facility" 
in Baghdad.

The two sources said that at three of those sites, prisoners were being 
held by the Wolf Brigade, one of the Interior Ministry commando forces 
most feared by Sunnis.

After the Nov. 13 raid, Iraqi-U.S. teams inspected ministry sites on 
Dec. 8, Dec. 20, Dec. 28, Jan. 19, Feb. 16 and March 22, according to 
Lt. Col. Kevin Curry, spokesman for U.S. detention operations.

Curry added in a statement: "At one of the sites, thirteen detainees 
showed signs of abuse that required immediate medical care. The signs of 
abuse included broken bones, indications that they had been beaten with 
hoses and wires, signs that they had been hung from the ceiling, and 
cigarette burns. These individuals were transferred to a nearby Iraqi 
detention facility and provided medical care. Most of the abuse appeared 
to have occurred prior to arriving at that site.

"There were several cases of physical abuse at one other inspection 
site. These included evidence of scars, missing toenails, dislocated 
shoulders, severe bruising, and cigarette burns. At the time of the 
inspection, most of the apparent injuries were months old; however, 
there were indications that three cases of abuse occurred within a week 
of the inspection. No detainee required immediate hospitalization for 
injuries at that site," Curry said.

"If a soldier at any level sees abuse of an Iraqi somewhere or hears of 
it . . . we certainly take it seriously and pursue it," Gardner said. 
"We take it extremely seriously, and part of the goal is to develop a 
detention process that's free of abuse."

Curry's statement confirmed abuse depicted in accounts and photographs 
given earlier to The Washington Post by the U.S. and Iraqi officials 
involved in the inspections, including the dislocated shoulders that the 
officials said were caused by hanging detainees from ceilings.

"I don't want to downplay the level of abuse," Gardner said of the cases 
found during inspections. "In some of them, there were a couple where it 
was pretty severe."

"Two facilities had clear signs of abuse, although we found some signs 
of prior abuse in select detainees at each of the six inspections," 
Gardner said in a statement. "Cases where the abuse appeared to have 
been committed within the last 3-4 days the detainees were evacuated for 
medical attention. We do not leave the facility until we are assured 
that the detainees are safe from physical abuse at that site.

"During all six inspections other deficiencies were noted and provided 
for corrective action," Gardner said in the statement. "We feel these 
actions are consistent with the comments Gen. Pace made earlier in the 
year."

U.S. efforts to eliminate torture in Iraq's prisons and detention 
centers include training Iraqi corrections officers, increasing capacity 
at detention centers and training Iraqi security forces on the rights 
and care of detainees, Gardner said.

The Iraqi official involved in the inspections said he saw abused 
detainees at all the sites visited. At a sandbagged checkpoint in 
Baghdad's Green Zone, the official pulled from his pocket a press 
clipping quoting Pace's remarks of Nov. 29, unfolded it and read it aloud.

"I want them to do what General Pace said," the Iraqi official said. 
Interior Ministry forces and allied Shiite militias have become more 
adept at hiding detainees and they kidnap victims from inspectors, he 
said. Iraqis "are looking for some of the Americans to do the right 
thing," he added. "Don't be intimidated by the Iraqi politicians."

According to the Iraqi official, the Americans initially said they would 
suspend their policy of removing prisoners from sites where abuse was 
found until after Iraq's national elections, which were held Dec. 15, 
because disclosures of Interior Ministry abuses were politically 
sensitive. The elections came and went, the official said, and the 
Americans continued leaving detainees at sites that held bruised, burned 
and limping prisoners.

Iraqi Justice Minister Abdul Hussein Shandal, however, said the 
Americans "don't have the right" to transfer detainees from detention 
centers operated by Iraqi ministries. The Nov. 13 raid "was the last 
incident in which the U.S. asked for such a transfer," he said.

While the interviews with top U.S. and Iraqi officials confirmed the 
continuing findings of torture victims at Iraqi detention centers, Maj. 
Gen. Rick Lynch, the main U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, broadly 
denied in remarks to U.S. reporters in Baghdad that any abuse had been 
found at any of the centers since the initial raid on Nov. 13.

"In these facilities that we did inspect unannounced, we saw no signs of 
abuse," Lynch told reporters at a briefing March 30. "The facilities 
were, by our standards, overcrowded, but the people being held at those 
facilities were being properly taken care of; they were being fed, they 
had water, they were taken care of. So no abuse, no evidence of torture 
in those facilities."

Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador, said in an interview that when Americans 
find abuse, "we document it, we investigate, we do a report, and we 
ultimately pass that report to the government."

After abuse was found at one Interior Ministry site, "that very day I 
went and talked to the government," Khalilzad said. "We take this very 
seriously."

Khalilzad's calls to rein in Shiite security forces and militias have 
put him on increasingly prickly terms with some members of Iraq's 
governing coalition of Shiite religious parties. Khalilzad has 
repeatedly urged that Interior Ministry forces be brought under the 
control of a nonsectarian minister.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/23/AR2006042301027.html?referrer=email
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