Iraqi Security Tactics Evoke the Hussein Era
Many detainees face beatings and some are killed. U.S.
officials
are troubled by the reports.
By Jeffrey Fleishman and Asmaa Waguih
Special to The Times
June 19, 2005
BAGHDAD — The public war on the Iraqi insurgency has led to an
atmosphere of hidden brutalities, including abuse and torture, carried
out against detainees by the nation's special security forces,
according to defense lawyers, international organizations and Iraq's
Ministry of Human Rights.
Up to 60% of the estimated 12,000 detainees in the country's
prisons and military compounds face intimidation, beatings or torture
that leads to broken bones and sometimes death, said Saad Sultan, head
of a board overseeing the treatment of prisoners at the Human Rights
Ministry. He added that police and security forces attached to the
Interior Ministry are responsible for most abuses.
The units have used tactics reminiscent of Saddam Hussein's secret
intelligence squads, according to the ministry and independent human
rights groups and lawyers, who have cataloged abuses.
"We've documented a lot of torture cases," said Sultan, whose
committee is pushing for wider access to Iraqi-run prisons across the
nation. "There are beatings, punching, electric shocks to the body,
including sensitive areas, hanging prisoners upside down and beating
them and dragging them on the ground…. Many police officers come from a
culture of torture from their experiences over the last 35 years. Most
of them worked during Saddam's regime."
The ordeal described by Hussam Guheithi is similar to many cases.
When Iraqi national guardsmen raided his home last month, the
35-year-old Sunni Muslim imam said they lashed him with cables, broke
his nose and promised to soak their uniforms with his blood. He was
blindfolded and driven to a military base, where he was interrogated
and beaten until the soldiers were satisfied that he wasn't an
extremist.
At the end of nine days, Guheithi said, the guardsmen told him,
"You have to bear with us. You know the situation now. We're trying to
find terrorists."
The Interior Ministry, responsible for the nation's internal
security, acknowledges cases of mistreatment but denies that torture is
common. Interior Minister Bayan Jabr is a Shiite Muslim, and some Sunni
Muslim tribal leaders and politicians have accused the ministry of
unfairly targeting Sunnis, who make up the bulk of the insurgency.
"There are no official accusations that the ministry's forces are
carrying out widespread abuse and torture of detainees," said Col.
Adnan Joubouri, a ministry spokesman. "There was some abuse of
authority, and those officials responsible are being punished."
U.S. officials, whose image on detainment issues has already been
tarnished by the prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib, say they are
troubled by the allegations of torture. They worry that mistreatment by
Iraqi police and national guardsmen, thousands of whom were trained by
American instructors who sought to steer the departments away from
Hussein's corrupt legacy, may be viewed as an extension of Abu Ghraib.
"We understand and we hear that [torture] is potentially
happening, and this is an issue we are constantly talking about," said
a senior U.S. military official in Baghdad. "I think this is an issue
no one can afford to ignore."
Stories of torture and abuse against suspected Shiite and Sunni
criminals and rebels are unfolding in the midst of the campaign against
a relentless insurgency. Iraqi forces are frustrated by their inability
to stop car bombings and ambushes that have killed more than 1,000
people in recent weeks.
Rising crime, a shaky court system, the lack of a constitution to
define civil rights and an Interior Ministry underequipped to pursue
well-armed rebel networks have made human rights less of an immediate
concern for Iraqis than bringing order to the nation, Iraqi and U.S.
officials say.
Having endured more than two years of violence since the U.S.-led
invasion, many Iraqis favor tough measures to end the unrest. The death
penalty was recently reinstated, and for much of the country there is
an unspoken acceptance — often rooted in harsh tribal justice — that
intimidation and torture serve a purpose. Such attitudes are
complicated by sectarian strains between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.
Under Hussein, the minority Sunnis were the core of the ruling
Baath Party and controlled the country. The new Iraqi government is
dominated by Shiites, who make up the majority of Iraq's population.
Each side blames the other for the bloodshed. This dynamic poses an
incendiary possibility: Accounts of torture in detention given by Sunni
extremists might have been fabricated or embellished to help instigate
a civil war against Shiites and the government. The Human Rights
Ministry says it has encountered made-up allegations of abuse.
"Ninety percent of detainees say that they confessed under
torture," said Judge Luqman Thabit Samiraii, head of the 1st Iraqi
Central Criminal Court. "Yet 80% of them have no torture marks. But
torture does exist during interrogations, I admit that."
The courts aren't always willing to explore abuse claims. In a
trial last month, Samiraii denied a defense lawyer's request to have
four suspects medically examined to determine whether their confessions
to the murder of an Interior Ministry official had been induced by
torture. The defendants, three of whom were sentenced to death, said
they had been repeatedly beaten. One of them said police had sodomized
him with a metal rod.
Before the four men appeared in the courtroom, their confessions
had been aired on the popular Iraqi television program "Terrorism in
the Hands of Justice." The show is the government's attempt to
demystify the insurgency by portraying suspected rebels as brutish
killers rather than revolutionaries. Defense lawyers argue that some of
the accused are coerced into giving confessions and that the program
violates defendants' right to a fair trial.
"The Americans are occupying the country, but the Iraqi national
guard and Iraqi police are violating the human rights of detainees,"
said Sattar Raouf, director of the Popular Committee for Culture and
Arts, who has followed allegations of abuse. "Intelligence and security
forces are torturing people for confessions. You can go to the sixth
and seventh floors of the Interior Ministry and find case after case
like this."
The Interior and Justice ministries have been struggling over
control of prisons and detention centers. Interior operates in a secret
realm of intelligence networks in which suspects can be jailed or
vanish for weeks. Sultan said his committee has found less abuse in
centers under the jurisdiction of the Justice Ministry. He added that
Justice has stricter oversight on inmate conditions and is less
involved than Interior in interrogating suspects, including alleged
insurgents.
A report this year by the international organization
Human Rights Watch found that abuse had become "routine and
commonplace" and that detainees were often beaten and held in violation
of judicial process, including not receiving court hearings within 24
hours of their arrests. The group stated that some detainees — many of
whom are arrested based on tips by paid informants — waited months
before a court appearance.
"One of the most common complaints made by detainees," said Human
Rights Watch, which interviewed 90 current and former detainees in
2004, "was of police officials threatening them with indefinite
detention if they failed to pay them sums of money."
The abuses reported by former detainees and human rights
organizations echo some of the Hussein regime's tactics: poor legal
protection, crowded cells, electric shock, threats of sexual abuse and
hanging and beating prisoners for prolonged periods.
Abbas Jibouri said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times that
about 25 national guard members raided his house on the morning of May
8.
A 41-year-old farmer from the Maden area near Baghdad, Jibouri,
whose account could not be verified, said he had been taken to a
detainee center and later transferred to the national guard base at
Rustumiya.
"There was always one man interrogating me and four or five others
who punched me in different parts of my body," said Jibouri, a Sunni.
"They accused me of providing terrorists with weapons and money…. They
gave me a list of 10 names and told me to give information about their
being terrorists. One of the names belonged to my brother and another
was a neighbor of mine who actually died a year or so ago."
Jibouri said he was beaten with pipes and given electrical shocks. "I
didn't know when it would end," he said.
At one point, Jibouri said, interrogators told him: "You [Sunnis]
ruled the country for 35 years. We're going to retaliate now." Jibouri
was released after 10 days in custody. He was not charged with a crime.
Guheithi, the Sunni imam, has been detained by American as well as
Iraqi forces. He said U.S. troops had arrested him in January 2004 and
accused him of preaching holy war at his mosque. He said he was held in
solitary confinement for seven days and released. American soldiers, he
said, "didn't torture me, but an Iraqi man with them punched me hard
several times."
Last month, Iraqi national guardsmen handcuffed Guheithi at the home of
his brother in the Rasafa neighborhood of Baghdad.
"They were beating me and my brothers in front of our children,"
he said. "They told me that I was helping the insurgents by sending
trucks to Fallouja during the first [anti-insurgent] offensive in April
2004. They had piles of reports about me. I was actually only sending
humanitarian aid to the people there, which I gathered from our mosque."
He said he was held for nine days in the Taji camp, which is used by
U.S. and Iraqi forces.
"I stayed there with 19 other people in a very small room with no
windows," said Guheithi, who added that he was often blindfolded and
beaten. "When they found that we had no information, they set us free….
I and other detainees about to be released had to swear that we were
not terrorists and that we are going to participate in building a
democratic country."
*
Times staff writer Carol J. Williams contributed to
this report.
