ZCZC
BFF-34
IRAQ-RIGHTS-PRISONERS
Torture ongoing in Iraq jail despite documentation, HRW says
BAGHDAD, April 18, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Iraqi officers at a detention facility
in the onetime jihadist stronghold of Mosul have continued to torture
detainees despite rights defenders’ efforts to intervene, Human Rights Watch
said Thursday.
HRW documented new torture allegations early this year at the Faisaliya
prison in northern Iraq, around six months after publishing a report on what
it said were “chilling” abuses there and in two nearby facilities.
The rights group said it had reached out about last year’s allegations to
the Iraqi premier’s office, the foreign ministry and the interior ministry,
without response.
“If the Iraqi government ignores credible reports of torture, it’s no
wonder that the abuses persist,” said Lama Fakih, HRW’s deputy Middle East
director.
“What will it take for the authorities to take torture allegations
seriously?”
The new reports come from a detainee held in Faisaliya in early 2019.
He described guards beating groups of naked detainees on their feet with
plastic piping until they confessed to being affiliated with the Islamic
State jihadist group.
The prisoner said guards also waterboarded detainees and suspended them
from the ceiling with their hands tied behind their backs.
Faisaliya is located in eastern Mosul, the battered Iraqi city that was
IS’s de facto capital for three years before security forces recaptured it in
late 2017.
Iraq has since tried thousands of its own citizens, as well as hundreds of
foreigners, for affiliation to IS.
But rights groups including HRW say the accused are often detained on
lofty or circumstantial evidence, their trials do not guarantee due process,
and that torture is widespread in Iraq’s prison system.
In its Thursday release, HRW said Iraqi judges had “routinely failed” to
investigate credible reports of torture in detention.
Earlier this month, it said, Iraq’s High Judicial Council told HRW that
Iraqi courts had investigated 275 complaints against investigative officers
by the end of 2018.
The council said 176 had been “resolved,” without providing details of the
outcome, while 99 were still being addressed.
BSS/AFP/RY/1530 hrs