Torture continues in Iraq - AI
2006-03-06 21:32
London - Detainees in Iraq are being tortured with electric shocks and beatings using plastic cables despite US promises to prevent such abuse after the Abu Ghraib scandal, a report by an international rights group said on Monday.
Amnesty International said many of the reported abuses have occurred at facilities controlled by Iraqi authorities.
"Many cases of torture and ill-treatment of detainees held in facilities controlled by the Iraqi authorities have been reported since the handover of power in June 2004," the report said.
In Baghdad, deputy interior minister for police affairs, Major-General Ali Ghalib rejected the allegations.
"We respect the reports of this humanitarian organisation," Ghalib said, "but regrettably some of the organisation's researchers are not accurate in giving information".
In November, Prime Minster Ibrahim al-Jaafari acknowledged that 170 Iraqis at an interior ministry facility in Baghdad showed signs of torture and malnutrition.
The government promised to investigate the case.
A US military spokesperson for detention operations said in response to the AI report that all detainees are treated according to international conventions and Iraqi law.
In the new allegations, former detainees claimed they were beaten with plastic cables, given electric shocks and made to stand in a flooded room as an electrical current was passed through the water, Amnesty said.
- AP