Review Edited by Jeremy Brecher, Jill Cutler, Brendan Smith, In The Name Of Democracy, American War Crimes In Iraq And Beyond, Metropolitan Books, 2005

  

In The Name of Democracy, American War Crimes In Iraq And Beyond is an anti-war book edited by Jeremy Brecher, Jill Cutler and Brendan Smith. It’s an anthology of articles which starts off fine but then gets farther and farther away from Iraq. It also becomes more and more of a diatribe where at first it was more about presenting evidence against how the U.S. occupied Iraq.

Continued Reports Of Dysfunctional Iraqi Justice System

In the United Nations’ Human Rights Commission’s latest report it found that Iraq’s judicial system is not working. It observed almost 800 cases across nine provinces, most of which had to do with terrorism charges, and found a lack of due process. There was a shortage of competent lawyers, torture and abuse were commonly used to obtain confessions, there was a broad application of the anti-terror laws, and liberal handing out of death sentences. These are the same problems that human rights groups have been noting about Iraq for years.

Crimes And Misdemeanors Of Kataib Hezbollah During War Vs ISIS Interview With Free Lance Journalist Jonathan Lee Krohn

(Reuters)

During the war against the Islamic State there were various reports about abuses carried out by Hashd al-Shaabi groups such as Kataib Hezbollah. They were accused of widespread property destruction after the liberation of Tikrit. During the operations to clear Anbar hundreds of men were detained and went missing. Some of these were covered in the media and by human rights groups, but the full extent of what happened is still not public knowledge. Jonathan Lee Krohn was a freelance journalist in Iraq at this time and was able to document several incidents in Salahaddin and Anbar. This is an interview with Krohn about what he found. He can be followed on Twitter @JonathanLKrohn.

Iraq Has Another Year With Poor Human Rights Record According to Amnesty International

Amnesty International recently released its annual review of human rights in the Middle Est for 2018. The section on Iraq could have been taken from any of the previous reports from the last fourteen years. The government’s forces continue to use torture. There is no rule of law nor due process for those that go through the justice system. The government also went after protesters in southern and northern Iraq. People associated with the Islamic State face group punishment. This is the underside of Iraq. Not only does it have a poor human rights record it also lacks some of the basics necessary for it to develop into a full democracy.

Der Spiegel Reporting On Abuse By Iraqi Forces During Mosul Battle Was True

In May 2017, there was a huge controversy in Iraq as photographer Ali Arkady released three articles documenting abuses by the Emergency Response Division (ERD) of Iraq’s Interior Ministry during the Mosul campaign. Arkady was roundly attacked by the ERD, the Iraqi forces, and on social media by the public for his stories. Three months later, it turned out Arkady was right, and the ERD unit he followed did do wrong.

Secret Prisons Alive And Well In Iraq

The United Nations’ Committee Against Torture was the latest organization to comment on Iraq’s continued use of torture and secret prisons. The committee made up of several experts reviewed Iraq’s history of abuse and called for the government to stop the practice. They specifically mentioned one secret facility at the Muthanna air base in Baghdad that was originally exposed in 2010, which the government said it would close down, but is still up and running to this day.

The United Nations’ committee called on Baghdad to close down its secret detention centers. The U.N. said that thousands of people were being held in secret prisons, some for as long as ten years. High threat suspects were routinely arrested without warrants and put into covert prisons run by the Defense and Interior Ministries where they were held incommunicado and tortured to obtain confessions. It wasn’t just high profile insurgents however that were thrown into these jails and abused, but people rounded up in mass arrests as well.

One specific secret location named by the committee was one at the Muthanna Air Base in western Baghdad. The center is run by the 54^th Brigade of the 6^th Army Division and the 56^th Brigade, also known as the Baghdad Brigade, which reports to the prime minister. In May 2010 the facility was first exposed. Human Rights Watch interviewed 42 prisoners from the jail who said they were tortured. At that time there were 6 women and 8 children being held there. Two of the former were the wives of Islamic State leaders Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Masri who were arrested after their husbands were killed. Others however were being detained to pressure their husbands who were also prisoners. In September, Amnesty International added that more than 400 detainees were at Muthanna, and confirmed the earlier Human Rights Watch claim that torture was used there. This included electric shock, beatings, and rape by the guards. After this exposure then Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki denied that it was a covert prison and that he was in control of it, but the Defense Ministry later confirmed that he was. This facility has now been passed down to the Abadi administration, which continues to use it.

Abuse has a long history in Iraq and is a lasting legacy of the Saddam dictatorship. It is a common practice, accepted by the courts, and carried out by all the post-2003 governments. Its routine application is a direct threat to the democracy developing in the country, yet there are no moves by the authorities to end it.

SOURCES

Amnesty International, “New order, same abuses: Unlawful detentions and torture in Iraq,” September 2010

Arraf, Jane al-Dulaimy, Mohammed, “Witness: Secret Iraq prison for women and children,” Christian Science Monitor, 5/26/10

Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) Human Rights Office, “Report on the judicial response to allegations of torture in Iraq,” February 2015

Human Rights Watch, “Iraq: Secret Jail Uncovered in Baghdad,” 2/1/11

International Crisis Group, “Loose Ends: Iraq’s Security Forces Between U.S. Drawdown And Withdrawal,” 10/26/10

Nebehay, Stephanie, “U.N. urges Iraq to close secret detention centres,” Reuters, 8/14/15

Parker, Ned, “Elite units under an office of Maliki’s linked to secret jail where detainees face torture, Iraq officials say,” Los Angeles Times, 7/14/11

- “The Iraq We Left Behind,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2012

United Nations Human Rights, “Committee against Torture considers the initial report of Iraq,” 7/30/15

How The Baath Turned Iraq Into A Nation Of Victims, Tale Of A Torturer

In Kanan Makiya’s famous Republic of Fear, The Politics of Modern Iraq, he wrote about how torture and horror had become the norm under the Baath Party in Iraq, and how that brutalized the entire society. The whole country was ruled and united by the fear generated by the regime. The government made violence the norm, and implicated hundreds of thousands of people in its use as informers, members of the security forces, etc. This was all part of the system of control that kept Saddam Hussein in power for so long. Makiya said that this made everyone a victim of the oppression, even the perpetrators. That was aptly shown by an interview with an Iraqi man named Jasim who became a torturer for the Baath, and who was later interviewed by the Iraq History Project.

Jasim got a job with one of the five man security agencies in Iraq as a torturer. His first day on the job, Jasim saw a woman electrocuted, which made him sick to his stomach. Then when it came time for him to beat his first prisoner he couldn’t do it, and his supervisor ordered his hand broken as a result. Eventually he began applying punishments, and with money from his new job he was able to buy his family a home making them beneficiaries of the abuse that he was dealing out. He became an alcoholic to try to forget all that he saw, and later left the agency, and turned to religion to try to ease his conscience. Jasim perfectly encapsulates the brutality of the Baath rule, and how it victimized everyone involved. Here is a transcript of part of the interview with Jasim.

I felt ill as I watched Abu Husam torturing people. It was hard for me to control myself.

            A short while later, they brought in a woman who refused to inform on her husband, who was a member of the Dawa Party. Abu Husam undressed her. He made her sit on a chair and tied her down. He connected electric wires to her hands, feet, and breasts. He began to shock her. She was shaking and screaming. She began to drool and then she fainted. Abu Husam took her out of the chair, dressed her, and called the guards to take her away.

            At that moment, I hated myself. I knew that soon I would become like this man.

            At the end of my training that day, Nazem came in and ordered me to go home. When he saw my condition, he took me home and we spoke. “What happened to you, Jasim? This is only the first day. You were only watching. What would you be like if it were you that had been working?

            “What did those people do?” I asked. “They did a terrible, unforgivable thing. They want to overthrow the government. They want to destabilize the country. If that happened, there would be chaos, terror, killing, and looting. Don’t believe that any of them are innocent! We are the innocent ones!”

            He dropped me home. My mother saw I was sad and asked, “Is there something wrong, son?”

            I looked in her eyes, shining with happiness, seeing me return from my first day at work and filled with the hope that we would soon have a better, more settled life. I couldn’t tell her what happened that day. “Nothing, Mother, I am just not used to this new job.” “Everybody finds things difficult at the beginning,” she said, “but they get used to it”

            I spent that night thinking about how I was supposed to hold the cable and beat people. I was filled with pain. Then, I remembered Nazem’s words, saying those people were criminals and traitors. I began to tell myself that they deserved what was happening because they had betrayed our nation. I convinced myself that they must be punished. Soon, the three days of training were over and the day I was to start working had arrived. I didn’t sleep that night. I knew that from then on I would be a torturer.

            The first person I was to torture was a man in his forties who was accused of joining the Dawa Party. I held the cable, but my hand was trembling. How could I beat this man who was older than me and whose eyes were beginning for mercy?

            Abu Husam shouted at me, “Don’t let your hands shake! Don’t be a coward!”

            I raised the cable to beat the man, but I couldn’t find the strength to hit him. Then Abu Husam slapped me hard in the face. An officer who was in the room said, “You’re a soldier here. Those who volunteer to work in the Security Directorate are the servants of the government. They follow orders. This time, I will have mercy on you. Your punishment will be minimal.”

            He turned to Aub Husam and said, “Carry out the orders!” Abu Husam tied my hand down and hit it with a metal pipe until it broke. After my hand healed, I returned to work. This time, the officer decided to supervise me personally. I was forced to torture a woman with electricity. I undressed her and connected her private parts to wires in the way Abu Husam had done. I shocked her until she fainted. I don’t know how my heart could be filled with such cruelty.

            “Well done!” said the officer. “That’s the way to do it! Those people are a plague! They’re trying to destroy our country. You must show them no mercy!” His words filled me with complicated feelings. After that day, I committed many violations as a torturer. I rented a house for my family. When they said, “good job!” it meant a lot to me.

            The officer ordered me to torture a man who was a member of the insurgents. I connected his penis to high voltage. I was merciless. I disconnected the wires and he urinated. His urine was mixed with blood. Then, I broke one of his legs.

            We had an arrangement with a lieutenant colonel that whenever a beautiful girl was sent, I was to beat her. Then, I would take her to his room to spend the night. I would stand next to the door and listen to the women screaming or begging him to leave her alone. I could hear how he would beat them. He raped so many women.

            At this time, I drank heavily. I tried not to think about all the things I was doing. It was my job.

SOURCE

Hagan, John, Kaiser, Joshua, and Hanson, Anna, Iraq and the Crimes of Aggressive War, The Legal Cynicism of Criminal Militarism, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015

UN: Iraq’s Courts Accept Torture & Abuse of Due Process

Iraq has long been known for having a flawed justice system. The 2005 constitution and other legislation ensure due process and protections against torture, but those are rarely followed. Due to the fact that the Iraqi courts rely so heavily upon confessions to decide cases and the history of abuse within the system dating back decades there is a built in bias to force detainees to admit to crimes. Other issues routinely occur as well such as the denial of lawyers and the ability to form a defense, and misapplying terrorism charges. The United Nations released a report in February 2015 alleging that the root problem lies with the Iraqi judges who do nothing about torture charges and overlook other violations.

The Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq Human Rights Office did a preliminary investigation of cases in Iraq in 2013 that found widespread violations in Iraq’s justice system. That was initiated after the United Nations received complaints from northern and western Iraq that the government was not following due process, were not providing fair trials, was abusing the Anti-Terrorism Law of 2006, and torturing prisoners. From October to December 2013 the U.N. looked at several cases where they found evidence to support those claims. They observed nine cases involving 11 defendants where the police were accused of torture to obtain confessions. During the trials the accused brought up the abuse allegations, but none of the presiding judges did anything about it. In all of the cases the judges asked that the defendants prove that they had been tortured. That was impossible because the authorities held them from when they were arrested to when they arrived at court. In most of the cases the judges decided to use their confessions even though they were said to be obtained under duress. Torture is banned in Iraq yet there is a long history of its widespread use. Since the police know that a confession will generally guarantee a conviction they often beat one out of suspects. These charges have often been with terrorism charges, but the U.N. found that in all types of cases the police are accused of beatings and other techniques to get suspects to talk. This initial look into the court system led to a more in depth investigation the following year.

From January to June 2014 the U.N. observed 92 cases where it found its initial concerns were substantiated. The U.N. went to Basra, Muthanna, Dhi Qar, and Maysan for six months, and looked at capital, anti-terror, honor killing, prostitution, human trafficking, and drug cases. 28 defendants in 17 cases alleged that they had been tortured to force a confession. In none of those cases did the judge order an investigation into those charges. In 9 cases a judge did ask for medical records to prove that they had been abused. Only in 2 cases were those provided, but they had no affect upon the trial as the judges proceeded anyway. Only in one case was a suspect asked about his torture allegations. The judge asked why the defendant did not report the torture to the investigating judge when he was questioned. The man said that he didn’t say anything because the police that beat him where with him in the room during the interrogation. In five other cases the U.N. heard witnesses provided by the prosecution say that they had been tortured to get them to accuse a defendant. In the end, 19 of the 28 defendants were convicted, four were acquitted and five had their cases adjourned. This pointed to one of the root problems with Iraq’s judicial system. Judges routinely hear about abuse, but do nothing about it. This implicit acceptance of torture means that there is no reason to stop it and gives the green light to the police to continue with their practices.

In some instances, the abuse dealt out by the Iraqi police was extreme. One woman in Basra claimed she had been beaten so badly that she had a miscarriage and had her arm broken. Another defendant accused the police of murdering his co-suspect during questioning, which was supported by his lawyer at trial. Another was told that his sister would be raped if he didn’t implicate another person of a crime. Again, many of these involved common criminal cases showing that the police were just as likely to commit violations against terrorism suspects as regular citizens.

The U.N. heard accusations of corruption within the police. In one case involving terrorism charges in Nasiriyah, Dhi Qar, a suspect said that the police told him they would not torture him and would let him go if they were paid $20,000. In another case a defense lawyer claimed the police asked him for bribes to release his defendants. Corruption is rampant throughout the Iraqi government so it should be no surprise that the security forces are involved. What is another concern is the fact that the authorities were willing to let a terrorism suspect go for money. That raises the question of how many insurgents might have been let go over the years if they were willing to pay off the police.

Other violations the U.N. heard about were not providing lawyers, not allowing a defense to be prepared, denying communication with attorneys, and misapplying terrorism and capital charges. In hardly any of the cases the U.N. reviewed were the suspects told that they had a right to a lawyer. This was further complicated by the fact that few of the people had the money to hire one. Usually the judge picked a lawyer in court to defend a person even though they had not met with their client before and therefore had no time to prepare a defense. In many of the cases the U.N. witnessed the lawyers usually made very few comments during the trial as a result. In one case in Nasiriya involving three accused of terrorism they had hired a lawyer, but a judge refused to accept him and picked a lawyer from the court instead. In four trials in Basra involving prostitution judges added the death penalty to their cases for no apparent reason. In one case in Basra involving the murder of a taxi driver a policeman got terrorism added to the charges because he claimed the defendant had killed his father. In another case where Red Crescent workers were arrested for handing out old flyers with a picture of Saddam Hussein on them, intelligence officers got terrorism charges added to their case as well. That was dismissed. Just like the torture allegations it is only with the complicity of the judges that these abuses are allowed to continue. The judiciary did not appear to care whether due process was being followed, and in some cases would carry out violations themselves. The reigning view appeared to be that if people were arrested and their case went to trial they were presumed guilty. Therefore any post-arrest abuses were accepted because the defendants were likely going to prison anyway.

The United Nations investigation provided more damning evidence against Iraq’s courts. Many other human rights groups have issued similar reports in the past noting these types of violations. The Iraqi government has done little to address these issues until recently. Prime Minister Haider Abadi did issue an order that arrest warrants had to be issued for all arrests and that people who were detained without them had to be released. There are a few reports that this is being followed. The deeper institutional problems of torture and denying a fair trial however have yet to be dealt with.

SOURCES

Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) Human Rights Office, “Report on the judicial response to allegations of torture in Iraq,” February 2015

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH VIDEO: Iraqi Woman Abused In Detention

Stories Of Human Rights Abuses In Iraq From Amnesty International and the State Department’s Annual Reports

Amnesty International and the U.S. State Department recently released their annual reports on human rights around the world. As usual, Iraq fared badly. Neither organization found any improvements in the situation within the country. The common charges of mass arrests, arbitrary detentions, holding suspects without charges and access to lawyers, torture and abuse of prisoners, holding people that should be released, corruption, intimidation and harassment of the media, and limiting freedom of speech and assembly were all heard. These abuses occurred at the hands of both the central and Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). The reason why this situation persists is because there is no due process, and more importantly no accountability within the government to stop and reform any of these practices. Even when parts of the government itself find cases of abuse nothing substantive is done about it. Investigations are always announced for example, but they never lead to anything. Since these types of report have become the norm for Iraq, there is nothing different between this year’s and the last few. What Amnesty and the State Department can provide is specific stories that can humanize the poor state of human rights within the country.

Iraq suffers from weak rule of law. Suspects are supposed to have a number of rights until they are found guilty, but that rarely happens. Two of the most common examples of how the government ignores these protections are the use of torture, and the public airing of confessions before detainees go to trial in terrorism cases. What happened to Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi is a high-profile example. In December 2011, several of the vice president’s bodyguards were arrested, and then shown on state-run TV confessing to carrying out assassinations for Hashemi. That resulted in several death sentences for him the next year. Hashemi and others later claimed that his guards were tortured, and forced to confess. One member of his security detail, Amir Sarbut Zaidan al-Batawi died in custody three months after his arrest. When his family received his body in March 2012, they said that it showed signs of abuse and torture. The government denied those charges, and said that he passed away because of kidney failure. More routine cases were like those of Nabhan Adel Hamid, Muad Mohammed Abed, Amer Ahmed Kassar, and Shakir Mohammed Anad who were arrested in Ramadi and Fallujah in March and April 2012. They were held incommunicado for several weeks, and allegedly tortured. Afterward their confessions were aired on local television. When they went to trial they told the court that those confessions were forced out of them due to abuse. The testimony of other detainees supported their claims, and a medical examination of one defendant found burn marks and other wounds consistent with torture. Despite that all four were sentenced to death in December. Under the constitution torture is outlawed. However, since the Iraqi criminal justice system is based upon confessions the most common way to obtain one is to beat it out of people. This is especially true for terrorism cases where the stakes are much higher. The use of televised confessions also undermines the justice system, since there’s no way a defendant can receive a fair trial if they have said they are guilty in public beforehand. Again, since terrorism is such a pressing concern, the government feels it necessary to continuously air these suspects before the public to make it look like its security measures are working.

Sometimes these harsh techniques lead to deaths either unintentionally or not. Samir Naji Awda al-Bilawi, a pharmacist, and his 13-year old son Mundhir were picked up at a checkpoint in Ramadi. Three days later the family found out that the father had died in custody. Images released to the media showed that he had injuries to his head and hands. The son later said that they had been beaten in a police station, and tortured including the use of electric shock. In September 2012, Yasin Chafadschi from Qayara, Ninewa was arrested, tortured, and died as a result. The press received pictures of the man with bruises, his eyes swollen shut, dried blood on his face, and his fingernails missing. The police denied they had done anything to him, and claimed that insurgents had kidnapped and killed him. Ninewa Governor Atheel Nujafi ordered an investigation into the matter, but nothing came of it. Again, these cases are common place in Iraq. Since so many prisoners are tortured it is inevitable that some of them die in custody. Even if there are inquiries like the one involving Chafadschi nothing ever comes of them. Again, because there is no political will to change the system, these abuses continue, and the security forces operate with impunity with no fear that their violations of people’s rights will ever be punished.

The number of people being picked up by the government, and facing these conditions is increasing, because of the tactics currently used by the security forces. The Iraqi army and police no longer carry out counterinsurgency operations like they did with the Americans. Instead, they are acting like the U.S. military did from 2003-2006 with similar results. The most common tactic is mass arrests during security sweeps. Human Rights Watch for example, reported that Federal Police raided eleven homes in Taji, Salahaddin on November 3, 2012, and arrested 41 people, including 29 children. 12 women and girls aged 11 to 60 were held for four days without charges at the headquarters of the police unit. They were all beat and tortured including electrocuting them, and suffocating them with plastic bags. Again, the main way information was extracted from prisoners was by force. This case was especially disturbing, because it did not involve terrorism suspects, but suspected family members, including children who were treated like their adult family members. Even if any intelligence were gained from this action the resulting backlash amongst the community would mean that the government could not rely upon these people to support their security operations. Instead, they would look at the Federal Police as a threatening force. That could lead to at least tacit support for any insurgents in the area, if not open backing.

These acts take place in Iraq’s many detention facilities, but there are also a number of secret ones run by the central and regional governments. In 2010, the media found out about one of these operating in the Green Zone run by security forces under the control of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that held more than 400 Sunni prisoners. Over 100 of them showed signs of torture. In March 2011, the government claimed that it had closed the place. In May 2012 however, Human Rights Watch reported that it was still in use as late as March 2012. By the end of that year there were still details emerging that it was in operation. Secret prisons quickly popped up across Iraq when the Iraqi security forces were put back together. The U.S. knew about many of these facilities, but did nothing, because the policy was that this was an Iraqi affair, and they needed to deal with it. Today, there is no reason to believe that Baghdad or the Kurdistan Regional Government will stop using these types of prisons to hide those they do not want the judicial system to know about.

Iraq also lacks due process. The Iraqi constitution states that prisoners have to see an investigative judge within 24 hours of their arrest, and that can only be extended for one day. In practice, most are usually held for 72 hours with some exceptions. Cases involving the death penalty, which are mostly about terrorism can lead to indefinite detentions. Prisoners are also supposed to be told their charges, and have access to their lawyers before they go to trial. That rarely happens. The norm is that people are often picked up with not knowing why, and some can be held for days to months to years without seeing a judge, lawyer or court. In December 2011, the army arrested three lawyers without warrants for attempting to represent their clients who were charged with terrorism. That led to a sit in by their peers, resulting in two being released the day they were picked up. The third however, was held for three months, and was only released after the Supreme Criminal Court ordered it. Afterward, all three claimed that they were tortured. In March 2012, during a routine visit to Kirkuk prison one detainee told inspectors that he had been held for 4 ½ years under terrorism charges without ever going to trial. That was obviously an extreme example, but shows just how little respect the security forces, and the various ministries and offices that run detention facilities have for the law. The Iraqi system is obviously overwhelmed by cases since it is dealing with an insurgency, but there appears to be little effort made to follow the constitution or the rules for how an investigation is to be conducted.

The final piece of this process is the judiciary, which is supposed to be independent, but in practice comes under the influence of many. Certain laws, the history of dictatorship, the security situation, and dependence upon other parts of the government all contribute to make the courts weak. Threats, tribal groups, insurgents, and gangs often impede the work of judges on top of that. On June 20, 2012, a judge from the Ninewa Criminal Court was shot down while driving through Mosul. On July 22, Al Qaeda in Iraq announced a campaign specifically against the judiciary. In total, eight judges were killed, and there were another ten attempts last year. Given this pressure there are many cases that simply get dropped, because judges are afraid that they will lose their lives. That’s also a reason why the judiciary often overlooks abuses that happen to detainees before they appear before them, because they know that the governing elite wants action taken against suspected insurgents and criminals. They will therefore ignore torture and forced confessions, and give out guilty sentences even though that is against the constitution, which outlaws abuse.

Iraq has a large number of media outlets, but their freedom to do their work is limited by the security and political situation. There are laws that protect the integrity of the press, but they often say “in accordance with existing law.” That means restrictive articles from the Baathist period still apply. The 1968 Publications Law allows imprisonment for seven years for insulting the government for instance. The media has said that politicians, government officials, security services, tribes, and businessmen all pressure them not to publish certain stories, and that they fear reprisals from the insurgency. That leads to a large amount of self-censorship. Reporters and media outlets also face direct targeting and intimidation. The Iraqi Journalists Rights Defense Association recorded 50 cases of harassment against 75 reporters in 2012. That same year, the Metro Center document 132 cases in Kurdistan, which included 5 death threats, 50 arrests, 21 beatings, and several lawsuits. Almost all of those incidents involved the independent and opposition media in the region. In November 2011, Karzan Karim, a former Asayesh officer and columnist for the Kurdistan Post was arrested after he wrote several articles about corruption at the Irbil International Airport. He was officially accused of revealing secrets about his time with Kurdish security, put on trial for terrorism, and sentenced to two years in prison in October 2012. His family claimed that he was beaten and tortured, and later received threats from the authorities after they publicly criticized his detention, and being held without trial for 11 months. On March 14, 2012, security forces held a TV crew from Russia Today for three hours when they tried to report about attacks upon emos and gays in Baghdad. The team had a permit, but the authorities took their film anyway. On April 11, Kurdish intelligence officers beat two reporters covering a meeting at a military facility in Zakho, Dohuk. On May 8, Kurdish security forces attacked two journalists covering a protest in front of the Kurdish parliament building, and took their equipment. On June 26, police in Kirkuk arrested a reporter and held him for five hours after he took photos of police beating child beggars in the city. On November 4, security forces beat an al-Sumaria cameraman, and then arrested him for filming a bomb site in Anbar, before releasing him later in the day. On November 18, the body of Samir al-Sheikh Ali, the editor of Al-Jamaheer newspaper was found dead in Baghdad. Ali was a human rights activist who pushed for media freedom. He was found shot three times in the chest. Kurdistan is also known for filing lawsuits against reporters and media outlets that criticize officials. In October, a Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) politburo member and his bodyguard sued Asos Hardi, the editor of Awene for an article that accused the two of attacking him in August 2011. The editor of Zang magazine and reporters for Bazaw magazine in the KRG received fines for around $858 for publishing articles critical of members of the government. Again, the new Iraq is supposed to protect freedom of the media, but in practice that does not always happen. Old laws are applied, which restrict their operations, and other pieces of legislation are ignored. The security forces have gone after journalists, and in Kurdistan there’s always the threat of being sued and having to pay fines if they write about anyone in the regional government. It’s no wonder that many reporters and their employers sometimes hold back on articles given this environment.

The KRG is also known for limiting freedom of association and for going after its critics. On March 27, Hussein Hama Ali Tawfiq, a businessman was arrested and taken to the Asayesh headquarters in Sulaymania where he was beaten. He was told to testify against others about corruption, but refused. He was later charged with bribery, and held until acquitted in November. There was no investigation into his case. On May 17, the Asayesh detained three Yazidi men in Sinjar, Ninewa for ten days. Their crime was for going to a conference sponsored by the central government. They were never charged, and the Asayesh told them not to go to anymore meetings in Baghdad without official permission from the Kurdish authorities. Kurdistan likes to portray itself as the “other Iraq” meaning that there is supposed to be more stability, security, and freedom than in the rest of the country. The above cases show that there is a limit to what people can do in not only the KRG, but in the disputed territories it lays claim to.

Kidnappings have been a chronic problem in Iraq since 2003. People being abducted is an all too common experience for people, and is usually done for money. On February 4, 2012, the driver, secretary, and brother of a member of parliament were all taken in Samarra, Salahaddin. The kidnappers demanded $1.5 million in ransom. That was never paid, and the brother and secretary were killed, with their bodies dumped five days later. The driver was later found beaten and unconscious. A man from Baghdad and a woman from Diyala were arrested over the matter. On August 23, two Yazidi men were kidnapped in Sinjar, and held for $600,000. On August 30, men dressed as members of the security forces abducted a Turkmen boy from Kirkuk. He was released on September 23 after his family paid for his release. Criminal elements or gangs do most of these, but sometimes the security forces are implicated. In May 30, a Yazidi man was taken in Kurdistan, and later found dead the next month. His family blamed the Asayesh. Organized crime grew tremendously during the 1990s, as the government would often use them to get around sanctions. After the fall of Saddam, these groups had free reign to grow, and expand into kidnapping. Many insurgents and armed groups also used the technique to raise money. Corrupt officials have probably been involved as well. This is a constant threat to the average Iraqi.

The main reason why Iraq has such a poor human rights record is that there is no accountability. During 2012, the Human Rights Ministry sent 500 cases involving torture to the courts. The ministry claimed that led to some arrest warrants being issued, but by the end of the year, nothing had happened with any of them. The same thing occurred in 2011. On October 21, security forces beat and wounded four protesters when a demonstration against the lack of services turned violent. The next day, the governorate council questioned the governor about the incident, and set up a committee to look into the matter, but it led to nothing. The use of beatings, torture, forced confessions, etc. are widely known throughout the country. The fact that the ruling parties have no problem with them is the reason why they persist. Most of Iraq’s leaders either grew up in Iraq under Saddam or were in exile in other authoritarian states like Syria or Iran. Living under those repressive systems means they have no issue with replicating them in the new Iraq.

Iraq is supposed to be a developing democracy, but with widespread abuse within the security forces, and the lack of rule of law that is becoming a precarious enterprise. Until politicians want to get rid of these practices they will continue, and Iraq will never have the basic freedoms necessary for a democratic society. Instead it will be a nation with the trappings of democracy like elected officials and a number of media outlets, but will suffer from torture, no due process, and the violation of people’s basic rights.

SOURCES

Amnesty International, “The State of the World’s Human Rights, Amnesty International Report 2013,” May 2013

Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, “United States Department of State Country Reports on Human Rights Practices,” United States Department of State, 2013

Iraq’s Human Rights Committee, An Example of Parliament’s Inability To Oversee The Government

Iraq’s constitution gives wide-ranging powers to the parliament to oversee the government. It can investigate public offices, question ministers, and remove them through no confidence votes. The problem is the executive branch has largely refused to cooperate. A perfect example of that is the relationship between the human rights committee and the Justice Ministry. The committee wants to question the Justice Minister, but he refuses. The committee wants to inspect prisons, but has recently been barred by the ministry. This shows the difference between what Iraqi law says and how it is actually practiced. The executive branch usually acts with impunity with little interference from the legislature, and when lawmakers do ask questions like the human rights committee has, they can easily be ignored.

Iraq’s Justice Minister Shammari has refused to be questioned by the human rights committee

In March 2013, the parliamentary human rights committee complained about the Justice Ministry. The committee said that two of its members were stopped from making an unannounced visit to a prison in Baghdad in December 2012. It blamed the Justice Minister Hassan Shammari, who in turn threatened to prosecute them for trying to enter a security facility without permission. The committee claimed that Shammari held a grudge against it for discovering a secret prison at Camp Honor in the Green Zone back in March 2011. One committee member stated that it could not do its work, because the government would not cooperate with it. Another said that no minister had ever agreed to be questioned about human rights issues, and that Minister Shammari even refused to be questioned at his offices within the ministry. Finally, a third told the press that government officials were harassing committee members for trying to do their work. The Iraqi constitution gives parliament the right to oversee the government, including questioning ministers. The problem has been the legislature has often neglected its duties, members have attempted to block its work, and the executive has refused to cooperate. The human rights committee has actually attempted to do its job by inspecting various prisons across the country, and requesting that Minister Shammari appear before it. He has simply refused, and there is nothing the committee can do to make him comply. That highlights a major flaw with the workings of the government, namely that the checks and balances included in the constitution are not complied with allowing the executive to do what it wants.

In this case, what the government is getting away with is torture, abuse, and ignoring due process at its detention facilities. In February, the Justice Ministry hosted a delegation from Britain’s parliament, and told them that there was no torture or human rights violations in Iraqi prisons. The human rights committee is one of many that have proven that false. In March 2011, after it found the secret prison at Camp Honor, the Human Rights Ministry claimed that it was closed down. The committee claimed that people were still being held there however. That same month, lawmakers went to Diyala where they discovered a prison where three-quarters of the prisoners had been held for up to two years with no trials. In August, the Justice Ministry turned it away from a prison in Hillah, Babil. A few days afterward a riot broke out there over mistreatment. In June 2012, it noted cases of torture at Taji prison in Salahaddin, blaming the judicial system. It claimed detainees were held there for up to eight years with no court date, that the prison had lost files on its wards, people who were supposed to have been released were still being held, and a lack of medical care. The United Nations, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch have made similar findings. The government usually disregards their reports saying that they are exaggerating or making unsubstantiated claims. The work of the human rights committee is important, because it is an official Iraqi source reporting on abuses. It has proven its worth through its inspections of Iraqi facilities. While the Justice Ministry has had no problem with some of its visits, others are obviously considered problematic, and hence they are denied access from time to time. Unfortunately, the committee has not been able to stop human rights violations in Iraq, which are deeply imbedded in the culture of the security forces, but it has helped to expose some of them, which is an important job for the legislature.

Parliament’s human rights committee is an exception to the rule in Iraq’s government. It is a legislative group who has tried to oversee the government through going out into the field, and requesting ministers appear before it. It has done important work finding cases of abuse in Iraq’s detention facilities. Unfortunately, it has often been stopped from completing its duties by the government. The Justice Ministry has blocked its visits several times, and Minister Shammari has refused to answer its questions. Usually, Iraq’s parliament is more compliant with the executive, because the same parties that run it control the ministries. There is no reason to inquire about the government’s actions, because that would open up all the ruling coalition members to investigation. The human rights committee shows that those lawmakers that are concerned about carrying out their duties can only go so far, because those in power do not want to be scrutinized, and have the ability to ignore the constitution when it suits them.

SOURCES

AIN, “Justice Ministry denies existence of torture, violations in Iraqi prisons,” 2/25/13

- “PHRC reveals “torture cases” against Taji Jail prisoners,” 6/27/12

Amnesty International, “Iraq: A Decade of Abuses,” 3/11/13

Brosk, Raman, “Torture against prisoners cannot be proven through claims, says Human Rights Ministry,” AK News, 6/27/12

Human Rights Watch, “Iraq: Mass Arrests, Incommunicado Detentions,” 5/15/12

International Crisis Group, “Failing Oversight: Iraq’s Unchecked Government,” 9/26/11

Al-Mada, “Parliamentary Human Rights: uncovered secret detainees in green zone visit prisons,” 3/23/13

Parker, Ned, “Elite units under an office of Maliki’s linked to secret jail where detainees face torture, Iraq officials say,” Los Angeles Times, 7/14/11

Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, “Quarterly Report to the United States Congress,” 4/30/11

UNAMI Human Rights Office and Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Report on Human Rights in Iraq: 2011,” May 2012

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL VIDEO: Iraq's Lethal Confession Culture

Human Rights Watch: Iraq Becoming More Authoritarian

Human Rights Watch in its annual world report found that Iraq has become more authoritarian in the last year. In 2012, the government clamped down upon the opposition, demonstrators, and reporters. The security forces continued to carry out arbitrary arrests, mass detentions, and tortured people on little to no evidence. The result was the limiting of political freedom, along with the continued lack of due process.

Human Rights Watch said that Iraq needed to reform its criminal justice system. According to the Criminal Procedure Code, people detained by the authorities have to have an arrest warrant, and need to be brought before an investigative judge within 24 hours of their arrest. Suspects then have the right to an attorney, and time to prepare their defense. This law is rarely followed. Human Rights Watch, the United Nations, and other groups have found people are regularly picked up and held incommunicado for weeks, sometimes months, and in some cases, years before they ever go to trial or see a judge. Lawyers often don’t see their clients until right before going to court. Iraqi criminal law was rarely followed under Saddam, and that culture of ignoring legislation has continued since then. A major problem is a lack of judges to adjudicate cases. Another is the fact that eight different organizations hold prisoners, and there is no overall authority that keeps track of them, so people often get lost in the system. A third issue is that people picked up by the Kurdish security forces are taken to Kurdistan, which has no process to transfer detainees back to the federal government. Finally, the government often picks people up on suspicion of terrorism, and feels no urgency to treat them fairly.

All of this leads to widespread abuses within the Iraq. One major cause of this is the reliance of the justice system upon confessions. That encourages threats, beatings, and torture to obtain them. People are regularly arrested, threatened, abused, and then confess against their will. Another factor is that since the withdrawal of American troops, the Iraqi security forces no longer try to prevent attacks, but are more reactive, carrying out mass arrests after an incident. Many of these raids are completely random, and sometimes include entire families. In November 2012, for example, Federal Police came to eleven homes in Taji, Salahaddin, and carried away 41 people, 29 of which were children. They were held for four days where they were electrocuted and suffocated. Women and their kids did not escape that treatment. Corruption is another issue. In December, Human Rights Watch documented cases of women being tortured, charged with terrorism, and then judges and members of the security forces demanding bribes to get them released. Finally, the army and police run secret prisons. In March 2011, the Justice Ministry said it would close down Camp Honor where a secret prison was discovered. Prisoners who were held there said they were beaten and tortured. A year later, Human Rights Watch received information that the facility was still open. The United Nations said these violations were the result of the culture of abuse, which is the legacy of Saddam Hussein. When his regime was overthrown the practices that he instituted remained. That’s why beatings are so common after someone is arrested, because that’s what happened in the ancien regime, and most police officers and soldiers either saw that happen or were victims of it themselves, so they are just perpetuating what they know. Not only that, but almost all of Iraq’s leaders either lived under Saddam, or in neighboring countries like Iran and Syria, which also ignore basic human rights, so they have no real motivation to solve these problems, because they have never lived under a system that had the rule of law.

Human Rights Watch reported newer troubling trends as well. In 2012, Iraq witnessed its second straight year of demonstrations. The central and regional government in Kurdistan responded by cracking down upon the right of assembly and the media. On February 17, hundreds of security forces surrounded protesters in Sulaymaniya City, while men in plain clothes beat them. On February 25, the police and army blocked hundreds of demonstrators from reaching Tahrir Square in Baghdad. People were told that there were lists of people that were wanted, and that anyone with a similar name would be picked up. Later in the year, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki flooded the square with pro-government supporters and secret agents in an attempt to push the dissenters out, and spy upon their activities. The security forces also blocked reporters from protests, beat them, and broke and confiscated their equipment. This created a sense of fear amongst both activists and the media, which eventually ended the demonstrations. Today, Iraq is again facing a wave of protests, and the government is once again slowly but surely imposing restrictions upon them. Both the Kurdistan Regional Government and Baghdad have shown little patience with public dissent against their rule, and have used the security forces and their followers to break up anyone that would protest against them. This is another clear violation of Iraqi law and the constitution, and points to the politicization of the army and police.

A final example of the problems with the security forces concerned attacks upon emo youth and gays in early 2012. In March, there were several reports of people following alternative lifestyles being threatened, beaten, and killed. Instead of investigating these cases, the Interior Ministry said that the stories were being made up, and did nothing about them. In fact, the Interior Ministry had been talking about eradicating the emo culture since the fall of 2011, which resulted in an official statement in February 2012 that emos were a threat to society, and then another that there was going to be a crackdown upon the youth movement. No one was ever prosecuted for the deaths, and the story eventually disappeared from the headlines. This pointed to the strength of religious parties within the Iraqi government and security forces, which were not open to Western culture coming to the country. Their followers were able to intimidate and kill people with impunity with the implicit support of the Interior Ministry.

Iraq has struggled to follow the rule of law for decades. That explains why there are still mass arrests, people being held incommunicado, secret prisons, abuse, corruption, and torture. Iraq seems to be taking more steps backwards however, as both Baghdad and the Kurdish regional government used the security forces to break up demonstrations in 2012, and Prime Minister Maliki appears to be doing the same thing right now with protesters. The attacks upon emos and gays also showed the cultural conservatism amongst some of the ruling parties who were not willing to allow these alternative lifestyles to be openly practiced. As one analyst for Human Rights Watch pointed out, in 2012 Iraq became more authoritarian, while not improving the safety of the general public. Rather if people lived in the wrong neighborhood, wanted to protest against the government, or take up a different way of living they were likely to be threatened, arrested, or even killed. That’s a sad state of affairs for a country that many people were hoping would develop into a democracy after the fall of Saddam. It goes to show that elections do not make a government that respects the rights of the people, minorities, and differing views. A culture has to be developed where freedom of expression and the media, and due process is respected. Those are all lacking in today’s Iraq.

SOURCES

Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights/United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) Human Rights Office, “Report on Human Rights in Iraq: January to June 2012,” October 2012

Human Rights Watch, “Iraq: A Broken Justice System,” 1/31/13

- “World Report 2013,” 1/31/13

JOURNEYMAN PICTURES VIDEO: Saddam's Hangman - Iraq, Dec. 2003

United Nations Human Rights Report Finds Continued Violence In Iraq, But More Importantly A Broken Justice System

In October 2012, the United Nations released its semi-annual human rights report on Iraq. It was authored by the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), and covered the first six months of last year. They had two major findings. First, violence and terrorism were still a daily occurrence in Iraq, although security overall was relatively stable. Second, Iraq’s justice system has major flaws. That includes the lack of due process, torture and abuse in prisons, the holding of detainees for long periods incommunicado, extended delays before trials, and the failure to release people after their charges had been dismissed, they were found guilty, or they served their terms. The U.N. noted that the Iraqi government was aware of these issues, and was working on improving some of them, but that it would take a very long time before any meaningful progress would be made. The report highlighted the fact that Iraq faces many institutional and cultural problems on top of the daily violence.

The United Nations noted that violence was up in the first half of 2012. There were more deaths in the first six months of 2012 compared to the same time period in 2011. From January to June 2011, UNAMI counted 1,256 killed. For that same period in 2012, it found 1,346 fatalities. Those numbers continued for the rest of the year as Iraq Body Count had more deaths for 2012, 4,557, than 2011, 4,136. The increase was due to more mass casualty attacks, namely bombings that occurred in 2012. Still, the two years were not far enough apart for the U.N. to declare that the situation had worsened. Rather it felt that security remained relatively stable for the last two years. It pointed to the lack of reconciliation, regional issues like the rebellion in Syria, and political disputes within Iraq as reasons why violence had not declined. Unfortunately, the United Nations predicted that would mean Iraqis would continue to suffer these levels of violence for the near future.

Of even longer term importance might be the fact that Iraq does not have strong rule of law. Its criminal justice system has had problems for decades dating back to the Baathist period, and many of those issues persist to the present day. First, there’s the issue of arrests. People are routinely picked up and held incommunicado. Some are placed in secret facilities, despite the Human Rights Minister recently claiming that none existed in the country. Ninewa has an especially bad record of this. Families there told UNAMI that they could not get ahold of relatives after they were picked up. They said that those taken away by the army routinely did not get access to lawyers. Not only that, but in February 2012, the head of the Ninewa Bar Association told the United Nations of five cases where lawyers were held by the army because they tried to represent people detained by the military. These are all violations of the Iraqi constitution and law, and harken back to the Saddam era. It creates a sense of fear and anger at the authorities, because families cannot find their relatives after they are arrested, while lawyers cannot gain access to them to protect their rights.

Iraqi prison (Shafaq News)

Another issue is people being held for extended periods without going to court. On June 30, Baghdad reported that it had 16,018 people waiting for trial in its prisons. During a visit to Kirkuk prison in March 2012, UNAMI found a prisoner who had been held four and a half years without a trial. In June, there was a protest at Taji prison where some claimed that they had spent five years in the facility without a court date. In provinces with disputed territories between the central and Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) there is the added issue of the role of the Kurdish security forces, the Asayesh. They don’t have the authority to arrest people outside of the Kurdistan Region, but they do. Those detained are usually taken to Kurdistan where the courts do not have jurisdiction over crimes out of the region either. That causes problems when the provinces or Baghdad request the prisoners be transferred since there is no legal process to do so. That leads to people sitting in jail for extended periods without trials, because of this bureaucratic hold-up. The result of all this is that many Iraqi prisons are overcrowded, and suffer from unsanitary conditions, and a lack of services. At the Chamchamal prison in Sulaymaniya there were 2,474 inmates in February 2012 in a facility meant to house 2,070. At the Al Qurna jail in Basra, there were 48 prisoners in rooms built for 20. Basra police said that they could not transfer detainees to the main prison in the province, because of a lack of space. The U.N. believed the main cause of this problem was that the government lacked the capacity, experience, and accountability to handle the number of prisoners held in the country. Another issue is the fact that up to seven different authorities controlled prisoners. That included the Justice, Interior, Defense, and Labor Ministries, along with the KRG, the police, and military units. That makes it extremely difficult to find prisoners, and work out their cases with the courts. That also means there is a lack of accountability as there is no one office that can look after detainees. Both the central and regional governments have promised greater oversight of their prisons. The Justice Ministry and Kurdistan are both building new facilities, and closing or rebuilding ones that don’t meet standards to address overcrowding. There has been no effort to better regulate the prisons however.

Corruption and red tape keeps Iraqis imprisoned longer than they should, and can even lead to being arrested. UNAMI found numerous cases of people having to pay bribes to guards or police to be released. In April 2012, the parliamentary integrity committee reported prisons were not following court orders to release detainees found not guilty or who had served their sentences unless they made payoffs. The June prison strike at Taji included complaints about delays in procedures that kept people in prison, and having to pay bribes either to get released or get a trial date. The U.N. was also told of cases where the security forces picked people up, because they had not been paid off. Graft and bribery are rampant throughout the Iraqi government. It should come as no surprise that the police, army, and prison system should be affected by it. It is just one more issue causing too many prisoners in some facilities, and people not getting their day in court, or worse, their freedom.

Iraq has laws against torture, but does not follow them. In January 2012, there were reports about torture at a facility near the Baghdad airport. That same month, there was a story of a man beaten and tortured by the Asayesh in Kirkuk. UNAMI documented mistreatment by prison guards and the army in Ninewa in the first half of last year. The Ministry of Justice has even admitted that there might be mistreatment in prisons run by the Defense and Interior Ministries. The Human Rights Ministry conducted 183 inspections of prisons and jails in the first half of 2012. It found that most abuse happened during the investigation period, and also pointed a finger at the Interior and Defense Ministry facilities as being the worst offenders. The main cause of this torture is the Iraqi legal systems dependence upon confessions. The main way these are obtained is beating it out of detainees. The U.N. called this part of the “culture of abuse” that Iraq suffers from. First, this has gone on for decades since the Saddam era, and therefore is an accepted practice. The idea of prosecuting such abuse is completely foreign in Iraq as a result. Not only that, but there is little sympathy amongst the public for people arrested, especially for terrorism or general crime, so there is no pressure to end it.

Iraq’s courts are no better than its prisons. Iraqi law bars confessions obtained through force being used, but judges still accept them. The government also regularly airs high profile detainees on state-run television explaining their guilt. That violates due process, and standards for fair trial. As noted before, some people have to wait months to years if ever to go to court. The U.N. believed this was caused by a lack of judges to review cases. In Irbil for example, there was only one judge for the Asayesh who had over 100 cases. To add to that, Iraq has had a huge increase in the number of executions. In 2010 there were only 18. That jumped to 67 in 2011, and 70 in just the first six months of 2012. With all the problems with the justice system, UNAMI was concerned about so many death penalties being handed out. There was no telling how many abuses might have happened in those cases. Again, since many of those being executed were picked up for terrorism charges, there is no public outcry to end them. Courts and due process are two important institutions and procedures to ensure a democratic system. Iraq is weak in both, which will continue to hinder its development as a truly free country.

Violence in Iraq is world famous, but the difficulties the country is facing in implementing a fair and equal justice system is only known by experts and Iraqis. Iraq continues to be beset by terrorists and insurgents, who while a shadow of their former selves have shown strong staying power. They do not appear to be willing to give up anytime soon, so the routine of shootings and explosions will continue for the foreseeable future. Even when that ends though, Iraq will lack the culture and institutions to make sure that people are treated fairly by the criminal justice system. The two are connected today, because the Iraqi security forces main way with dealing with attacks is to conduct raids and mass arrests. That floods the already struggling prison and court systems. Once there, prisoners are likely to be beaten to obtain a confession, and then have to wallow for months until they get to see a lawyer or go to court. Even if they are found innocent or guilty and serve their term, there is a question of whether they will be released unless they have the money to satisfy greedy guards and police who demand bribes. Some of these problems like overcrowding are slowly being address by the government, but the larger problems of abuse are not being dealt with at all. That’s because of the scars left by the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein have made such practices generally acceptable. Until that culture changes, Iraq’s institutions cannot begin to reform, and begin to implement a real system of due process that will ensure equal treatment for all.

SOURCES

Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights/United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) Human Rights Office, “Report on Human Rights in Iraq: January to June 2012,” October 2012

Iraq Body Count

Shafaq News, “Human rights minister denies the existence of secret prisons in Iraq,” 1/2/13

VIDEO: Uncle Saddam

 

This movie uses government propaganda films made by the former regime and other sources to create a sarcastic and critical view of Saddam Hussein.

How The World Found Out That Iraq Still Tortured People

In November 2005, an American military unit found a secret prison in an Iraqi Interior Ministry building in Baghdad. It contained over 170 prisoners, many of which showed signs of torture. U.S. and Iraqi officials knew that abuses were taking place within the country for quite some time, but had said little about it beforehand. Human rights groups had also noted mistreatment, but gotten little coverage. The detention center however, received worldwide attention, and let the world know that Iraq had not progressed much when it came to human rights despite the fall of Saddam Hussein.

On November 13, 2005, 173 prisoners were found in a basement in an Interior Ministry building in Baghdad. The facility was located in the Jadriya neighborhood across from the Green Zone. A unit from the 3^rd Infantry Division went to the site after several people had come to them looking for missing family members. Many of those in the prison had been tortured, with one prisoner claiming that 18 people had died as a result. The controversy caused by the discovery, forced Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari to admit that abuse did occur at the building, which was a first. (1) He also ordered an investigation into the matter. At the same time, Interior Minister Bayan Jabr told the press that only seven of the detainees had been abused. The Deputy Interior Minister for Intelligence Ali Hussein Kamal said that the Special Investigative Unit was responsible for the bunker. He went on to say that a general and a colonel were in charge, and that the latter reported directly to Minister Jabr. Both of them were members of the Badr Brigade, the militia of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. When Jabr became the Interior Minister under Jaafari’s government he immediately set about recruiting members of his militia into the security forces, especially the commando units. They started going after Sunnis in what was the beginning of the sectarian civil war. The Jadriya prison was one sign of the emergence of this conflict as almost all of the detainees there were Sunnis.

Interior Minister Jabr (right) was a commander in the Badr Brigdae and brought in hundreds of his militiamen into the security forces while in office (AP)

The Jadriya story opened the door to Iraqi officials talking about abuses going on within the security forces. An Interior Ministry official told the New York Times that there were 8-10 unofficial prisons in Baghdad, which were used to hold people picked up without warrants. The former head of special forces at the Ministry General Muntadhar Muhi Samarraie and the Deputy Human Rights Minister Aida Usayran said that members of the Badr Brigade within the police were torturing prisoners. The Inspector General at Interior added that there were extrajudicial killings going on. He too pointed to militia elements within the security forces as being the culprits. Even before men from Badr were being recruited into the police there were stories of abuses going on under Interior Minister Allawi Falah Hassan al-Naqib who served under the interim Premier Iyad Allawi. The rapidly deteriorating security situation led to thousands of men being brought into the security forces with no real checks on their backgrounds. Some were former police, some were insurgents, and some were militiamen. All of them had grown up under dictatorships either in Iraq or abroad in places like Iran where the Badr Brigade was based before the 2003 invasion. The U.S. were in charge of training all these new recruits, but never committed the necessary resources. There was also a rush to get as many police into the field as quickly as possible to deal with all the chaos and violence. The Americans were therefore never able to change the culture of the Iraqis who were used to beatings and torture, and repeated those techniques as new policemen mostly to gain confessions, which is the basis of the Iraqi justice system.

The U.S. knew about the mistreatment by the Iraqi security forces as well. The State Department detailed cases that occurred during Allawi’s time in office including torture, rape, and illegal detention in its annual human rights report of 2005. In April, General John Vines, the senior tactical commander in Iraq, issued an order that soldiers had to prevent any abuses by Iraqis, and report it. The next month, General George Casey, commander of Coalition forces, sent a letter to his troops saying that they needed to make sure Iraqi forces treated detainees correctly. That same month, the 1^st Cavalry and 3^rd Infantry Divisions collected over 120 allegations of abuse by the Iraqi security forces including beatings, electric shock, and choking. In June, General Casey issued a memo that Iraqi forces had to respect the rule of law and human rights after he received reports of mistreatment. By 2005, Iraq was a sovereign country meaning that the only thing the U.S. could do about this issue was inspect any joint facilities they had with the Iraqis to see whether any torture was going on, protest when they found any, and demand the Iraqi government follow up on cases like the Jadriya prison. The Americans also pushed for Interior Minister Jabr to be removed, but to no results until a new government was named in 2006 since his Supreme Council was an important element in the ruling coalition. Almost all of this occurred behind closed doors however, as the U.S. did not want to expose the wrong doings of its ally.

Human rights groups and the United Nations also tried drawing attention to the situation in Iraq. In January 2005, Human Rights Watch’s “The New Iraq? Torture and Ill Treatment of Detainees in Iraqi Custody” documented abuses under Allawi’s interim government committed by the Iraqi intelligence and police forces, and accused Iraqi officials of either supporting torture or not caring about it. (2) The paper said that abuse was routine, and there was no effort to stop it. The United Nations found that the Iraqi government was carrying out illegal arrests, extrajudicial killings, and torture, some of which was due to militias within the security forces. An official from the Human Rights Ministry told the Times of London that Jaafari’s government was no better. While these groups’ reports were all noted in the press, they were only blips amongst all the other stories about the growing violence in Iraq. They therefore had little to no impact, and were mostly missed by the general public.

The Jadriya story put the spotlight on Iraq’s poor human rights situation. Iraq was supposed to be transitioning to a democracy, but its treatment of prisoners showed that some things had remained the same. The incident only brought to light what U.S. and Iraqi officials already knew, and what outside groups had warned about before. The large number of stories exposed the dark side to the new Iraq. Little has changed since then with the security forces still routinely torturing prisoners in order to gain confessions. The government also continues to run secret prisons showing a basic lack of due process and a respect for rule of law. Baghdad is as uninterested in solving these problems today as it was back in 2005 meaning that they will only continue. The difference now is that everyone knows.

FOOTNOTES

1. San Francisco Chronicle, “Iraq concedes detainees likely were tortured,” 11/16/05

2. Edmonson, George, “Iraq routinely torturing prisoners, group says,” San Francisco Chronicle, 1/26/05

SOURCES

Allbritton, Christopher, “Why Iraq’s Police Are a Menace,” Time, 5/20/06

Burns, Robert, “Documents show top brass knew of abuse,” Associated Press, 12/7/05

Edmonson, George, “Iraq routinely torturing prisoners, group says,” San Francisco Chronicle, 1/26/05

Fadel, Leila, “Abuse of prisoners in Iraq widespread, officials say,” Knight Ridder Newspapers, 11/28/05

Graham, Bradley, “Iraqi police accused of abuses,” San Francisco Chronicle, 5/20/05

Hider, James, “West Turns Blind Eye As Police Put Saddam’s Torturers Back To Work,” Times of London, 7/7/05

Knowlton, Brian, “U.S. alleges rights abuses by Iraqis,” San Francisco Chronicle, 3/1/05

Moore, Solomon, “Killings Linked to Shiite Squads in Iraqi Police Force,” Los Angeles Times, 11/29/05

Said, Yahia, “Misunderstanding Iraq: Recommendations for US Policy,” Revenue Watch, November 2005

San Francisco Chronicle, “Iraq concedes detainees likely were tortured,” 11/16/05

Wong, Edward and Burns, John, “Iraqi Rift Grows After Discovery of Prison,” New York Times, 11/17/05