Chicago Tribune

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Iraq’s new security forces are routinely abusing and torturing detainees in ways reminiscent of those used by the notoriously brutal regime of Saddam Hussein, according to Iraqi government officials, human rights groups and victims of the abuse.

The discovery by U.S. forces earlier this week of an Interior Ministry bunker crammed with at least 161 malnourished detainees bearing signs of torture has illustrated the scale of the problem, which threatens to undermine the new democracy America is trying to build in Iraq.

On Tuesday, Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari ordered an inquiry into the circumstances of the detainees, who were held in the mostly Shiite Baghdad neighborhood of Jadriyah. Some of them had been paralyzed by the beatings they had received, and in some cases their skin was peeling off, according to Deputy Interior Minister Hussein Kamal.

“This sort of behavior completely undermines everything the Iraqi government stands for and everything the coalition came here for,” said Lt. Col. Frederick Wellman, a spokesman for the division of the multinational force in Iraq that is responsible for training Iraq’s police. “It is unacceptable in any form.”

Allegations of torture have long swirled around Iraq’s Interior Ministry forces, but the government has explained the charges as either isolated cases or as the work of insurgents, who have been accused of disguising themselves as police to detain and torture Sunnis in hopes of inflaming sectarian tensions.

Most of those being detained by government forces on suspicion of ties to the insurgency are Sunnis, and the Interior Ministry is run by Shiites loyal to the political parties now leading the democratically elected government.

But the discovery of the detainees in the bunker and the testimonies of victims suggest the abuse may be widespread and deeply rooted in the police forces.

A 43-year-old restaurant owner who asked not to be named because he fears retaliation recounted his six months in detention at two Interior Ministry facilities – the commando headquarters housed in a former Republican Guard palace and the main ministry building. He produced court documents and other papers confirming his time in government custody and showed scars on his legs that he said were caused by electric shocks.

During that time, he said, his interrogators administered electric shocks all over his body, including his genitals. They set fire to plastic bags and dripped the molten plastic on his flesh, he said, and stuck needles into his testicles. Mostly, he was given what his interrogators called the “flying fish” treatment, during which he was chained to a ceiling fan with his hands stretched behind his back while his interrogators beat him into confessing to crimes he said he didn’t commit. During a one-month period, three of his 80 cellmates died from the torture they received, he said. A nail was hammered into one man’s kneecap, he recalled.

Under interrogation, the man said, he confessed to shooting 150 Shiite pilgrims at a Baghdad shrine one night. Then his interrogator challenged him: “How do you know it was 150? It was dark!” No such incident ever occurred.

“It was so bad I don’t know what I confessed to,” he said. “There was always a hood on my head, and they made me put my thumbprint on many different statements.”

After three months, unable to walk and barely conscious, he was carried in a blanket and dumped on the floor in front of a judge, who ordered him hospitalized. Instead, his jailers took him back to the ministry and left him there another three months until he could walk and his scars had healed.

In October, he appeared in court, and the judge ordered him released for lack of evidence, the man said. But still the ordeal wasn’t over. Instead of freeing him, his jailers took him back to the Interior Ministry and contacted his family to demand $30,000 for his release. The family paid up, said the man, who now lives in hiding, afraid to go home in case he is detained again.

Not uncommon

The account of Ali, a 33-year old Sunni grocer who also asked that his full name be withheld because he fears retaliation, suggests such experiences are not uncommon. He spent 12 days in June at the commando headquarters, in a room that he said held 400 people. Starting in the late afternoon, detainees were taken away to nearby rooms for interrogation. “Interrogation means torture,” said Ali, a Sunni who lived in a mostly Shiite neighborhood. “The screaming is what tortures you worst – hearing people scream even like a woman.”

Ali said he was interrogated four times. His captors administered electric shocks to his fingers and toes, trussed him upside down on a pole and beat his feet till they dripped blood onto his face. Yet they never accused him of any specific crime, he said.

When he was released, his interrogators apologized, he recalled. “We know you are innocent,” one of them told him. “But we had to be sure.”

Garbage heaps

Stories such as these coincide with a flurry of discoveries of torture victims over the past six months, most of them dumped on garbage heaps around Baghdad after reportedly being detained by men wearing police uniforms.

Baghdad morgue director Faeq Bakr said there has been a marked increase in the number of corpses turning up at his facility bearing signs of systematic torture, including the drilling of kneecaps and skulls and the use of acid on flesh, methods that were common under the former regime.

Because the cause of death varies in torture cases, there are no statistics on the numbers killed by torture. “Some of the victims had been detained by police. Some of them were still wearing police handcuffs,” he said. “Though of course, you could buy those at the market.”

At least some of these killings are almost certainly being carried out by the Shiite militias who are known to have penetrated the security forces, and by the Sunni insurgent groups who are waging war with them. But at least some also are being carried out by the regular police forces, Iraqi officials say.

“Unfortunately these abuses are happening,” said Kamil Hashim, a spokesman for Iraq’s Human Rights Ministry. “We have received many complaints of people being detained without charge and of people being tortured during interrogation, using every available method that you can only imagine. And there are deaths, it is true.”

Blames former regime

Ahmed al-Barak, a human rights lawyer working for the government, blames the legacy of the former regime for the abuses. Unlike the Iraqi army, which was disbanded after the Baathist government collapsed and is now being rebuilt from scratch, many Iraqi police are holdovers from the old regime.

“The idea of human rights is a new issue for Iraqi society,” he said. “The majority of Iraqis were raised in a culture of violence, and I think we need time to make people understand that there’s another way.”

While some detainees have come forward with stories of torture, others have simply vanished.

Shukria Yusuf Ibrahim, 58, says she has been hunting for her three sons since 4:10 a.m. on June 3, when uniformed police commandos driving clearly marked vehicles descended on her home and took them away.

“I know they were police because I was running in the street behind the vehicles,” she said. She has visited the Interior Ministry several times to inquire after them.

“They tell me, if they are innocent, they will be released,” she said, sobbing quietly into her black abeya. “But I don’t believe them and I don’t believe anything anymore.”

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