IRAQI PRISONS Several officials allege torture

An Army doctor is going public about what he says he saw in facilities.
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
BAGHDAD, Iraq, and CAIRO, Egypt -- After a U.S. raid on a secret Iraqi government jail last month revealed some detainees were tortured and abused there, Interior Minister Bayan Jabr insisted abuse claims were exaggerated and that torture will not be tolerated in the new Iraq.
Nevertheless, U.S. soldiers and some Iraqi officials disagree. They say not only is prisoner abuse widespread, but that much of it is carried out by Jabr's subordinates. Efforts to bring the problem under control during the past year have largely been frustrated by indifference from senior Iraqi officials, they say.
Privately, half a dozen U.S. officers have acknowledged to the Monitor that prisoner abuse by Iraqi police is common.
Now, one officer is speaking out. Maj. R. John Stukey, a U.S. Army doctor who served in Baghdad from January to June, frequently visited Interior Ministry facilities on the east side of Baghdad to assess the health of prisoners. He says he personally treated about a dozen men who had been tortured, and observed an environment of overcrowding and neglect.
Many more of his patients alleged torture, but in most cases this couldn't be verified, since he often saw them for the first time months after their initial arrests and interrogations.
In one east Baghdad facility run by Iraq's Interior Ministry, a few miles from the secret jail that was raided by U.S. forces Nov. 13, Stukey says about 220 men were held in filthy conditions in a space so crowded that many couldn't lie down to sleep.
Helped where they could
Stukey visited the facilities with members of the 720th U.S. Military Police Battalion. The MPs filed frequent reports to their commanders about the ill-treatment and, Stukey says, did what they could to prevent torture and improve the prisoners' conditions. They made a point of distributing soap, toothbrushes and Qurans whenever they visited.
"We did report what we saw, but it was like trying to put out a forest fire with a bucket of water," said Stukey by telephone at Fort Rucker in Alabama, where he is based. "The MPs submitted reports at least several times a week on detention issues. We knew about it, and we tried to change it, but it was just one of those things you had to deal with."
Officials from the 720th, now back at its base in Fort Hood, Texas, did not respond to requests for comment.
Coalition troops, fighting a deadly insurgency, say they don't have the manpower to compel better behavior from their Iraqi partners, and that to do so would require them to court frequent conflict with their closest allies inside the country.
Ambiguity
The Bush administration has sent mixed messages on the subject. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday that the United States "does not authorize or condone torture of detainees." The United States has also signed the U.N. Convention Against Torture. But administration officials have also argued that the treaty rules on "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment do not apply outside U.S. territory.
The tension over the U.S. position was illustrated at a press conference with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Joint Chief of Staff Chairman Gen. Peter Pace on Nov. 29.
When Pace said, "It's absolutely the responsibility of every U.S. service member if they see inhumane treatment being conducted to intervene to stop it." Rumsfeld interjected, "I don't think you mean they have an obligation to physically stop it; it's to report it."
To this, Pace replied: "If they are physically present when inhumane treatment is taking place, sir, they have an obligation to try to stop it."
Since that exchange, Rumsfeld has ordered military commanders to clarify the rules for how U.S. troops should respond if they witness abuse of detainees.
Backs up statement
Pat Lang, a retired colonel and former head of Middle East Intelligence for the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency, says it's important for the United States to have a zero-tolerance policy toward torture.
"We know that left to their own devices the Iraqis are going to do these kinds of things, and there's no chance of stopping it all over the country," he says. "But to me, this is more about us than it is about them. We can't tolerate this when we see it. I don't want our standards eroded any further. It's bad for the force; so Pace's policy statement is very important."
Human rights groups say that police abuse in Iraq is by now a well-established pattern: Iraq's police units, many filled with members of Shiite militias that fought against Saddam Hussein, generally have been left without oversight. Since many of these men view Iraq's Sunni Arab population, who were privileged under Saddam, as their enemies, abuse is reportedly widespread.
Stukey recalls treating one Sunni businessman, about to be released, "who was beaten so badly that his fingernails had fallen off, some pulled off, and I felt ashamed to be associated with it."
Iyad Allawi, the former Iraqi prime minister and close U.S. ally, told The Observer, a British newspaper, last month that "people are doing the same as [in] Saddam's time and worse." The British are investigating allegations that the Iraqi police tortured two men to death with electric drills in the southern city of Basra.
To date, no Iraqi police officers have been arrested or charged in connection with the torture discovered by U.S. troops at the jail in November. Jabr, a former member of the Badr Brigade, an Iranian-trained militia, told reporters he had personally ordered that the men be held at the secret facility. He promised swift action when the abuse was uncovered.
Last week, Nouri al-Nouri, the ministry's inspector for human rights, was fired. The Interior Ministry press office, the office of Jabr and the office of the prime minister did not return calls seeking comment.
Iraq's prime minister had promised a full report into abuse of detainees in Iraq by Dec. 1, but the government says the joint U.S.-Iraq investigation is ongoing.