Torture in Iraq worse since Abu Ghraib

These are the damning conclusions of a report entitled “Beyond Abu Ghraib: Detention and Torture in Iraq,” released Monday by the London-based human rights group Amnesty International.

The arbitrary detention of tens of thousands of Iraqis in the three years since the US invaded the country and the physical abuse of those held are ongoing war crimes by the US occupation. These practices, carried out in flagrant violation of international law, go a long way towards explaining the inexhaustible supply of recruits willing to die fighting to expel American troops from their country.

Describing the human rights situation in Iraq as “dire” and the record of US and British troops in the country as “unpalatable,” the report charges that the “continuing detentions without charge or trial of thousands of people in Iraq who are classified by the MNF [Multinational Force] as ‘security internees’” had facilitated and encouraged the kind of torture seen in the images that emerged from Abu Ghraib in April 2004 and again in February of this year.

The US-led occupation, Amnesty continued, “has established procedures which deprive detainees of human rights guaranteed in international human rights law and standards.”

The report points out that detainees have no means of challenging their detention or even learning the charges against them. In many cases, their arrests are not even reported, amounting to forced “disappearances,” a practice barred by international law and associated with fascist military dictatorships.

More
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/mar2006/guan-m07.shtml