‘They were not innocent, but that does not mean interrogators can torture them’
THE interior ministry said on Sunday it has opened an inquiry into complaints of prisoners being tortured and the slow processing of cases in two jails of southern Iraq.
‘Interior Minister Jawad Bolani dispatched a delegation of top professional interrogators to Diwaniyah and Amara to investigate allegations of violations’ of human rights, a senior ministry official told AFP.
The delegation included General Ahmad Abu Reghif, the ministry’s director-general of home affairs, and General Abdel Karim Khalaf, spokesman for the interior ministry. They visited Diwaniyah, 180 kilometres south of Baghdad, and Amara, 365 kilometres from the capital, on Saturday.
Iraq’s prison system is the joint responsibility of the ministries of justice, interior and defence.
‘There have been cases of torture against 10 prisoners accused of terrorism,’ the interior ministry official said. ‘They were not innocent, but that does not mean interrogators can torture them. We have established a commission to review the cases of the accused because they insist their confessions were extracted through torture.’
The official said the commission would also recommend that the interrogators and prison chief in Diwaniyah, which holds around 270 prisoners, be transferred to another facility.
In Amara, where about 700 suspects are being held, eight detainees started a hunger strike several days ago, protesting against delays in the processing of their cases.
They were arrested during and after a military operation in June 2008 against the Mahdi Army, the militia led by radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
‘The processing delays are because of bureaucratic problems,’ the official said. ‘They were arrested by the Iraqi army based on intelligence. The army has been dragging its feet over giving the information it holds to judges.’ Around 26,200 people are held in prisons run by Iraqi authorities, according to Human Rights Minister Wejdan Mikheil. — AFP
Source: Iraq probes torture complaints
