Torture 101

Freedom is on the march! (From The Age)

Iraq investigates more prisoner abuse

Another prisoner abuse scandal has erupted in Iraq with the discovery of more than 170 tortured and starving prisoners in a locked Interior Ministry bunker beneath Baghdad. Many had been severely beaten. Some had been paralysed. Others had skin peeled off their bodies.

US officials deny any responsibility and Iraq's government has ordered an investigation, saying it is shocked by the horrific find. Some human rights groups say 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.

The detainees were discovered on Sunday night during a raid by US troops searching for a missing teenage boy. They were found in an underground cell near an Interior Ministry compound in Jadriya, a central Baghdad neighbourhood.

Many of them showed signs of severe hunger and beatings. "I was informed that there were 173 detainees held at an Interior Ministry prison and they appear to be malnourished," Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari told reporters. "There is also some talk that they were subjected to some kind of torture."

A junior interior minister Hussein Kamal said "they (the detainees) were being abused. "I've never seen such a situation like this during the past two years in Baghdad, this is the worst," he said."

"I saw signs of physical abuse by brutal beating, one or two detainees were paralysed and some had their skin peeled off various parts of their bodies."

In Washington, US State Department spokesman Adam Ereli called the allegations of abuse "troubling."

Troubling indeed....