Iraq charges 100 over prison torture

"God help me" scrawled on a cell door

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's Interior Ministry has charged nearly 100 employees, including a police general and other high-ranking officers, with involvement in torturing detainees at a prison in Baghdad known as Site 4.

Police and other forces of Iraq's Shi'ite-led Interior Ministry have long been accused by Sunni Arabs of operating torture centers and dungeons holding Sunni detainees.

The charges, announced by Interior Minister Jawad al Bolani to reporters late on Monday, are believed to be the first of their kind against Interior Ministry employees and come amid mounting U.S. pressure on Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to rein in Shi'ite militias in the police.

Known as Site 4, the eastern Baghdad prison run by the Interior Ministry was found to hold 1,431 detainees, including 37 juveniles, after a joint Iraqi-U.S. inspection in May.

A United Nations report said the prisoners were held in "overcrowded, unsafe and unhealthy conditions" and that detainees suffered "systematic physical and physiological abuse by Ministry of Interior officials."

Bolani said 19 officers were charged in the case, including a general who commanded a special police force at the center of Sunni complaints of Shi'ite death squads. The officer, whom he did not name, was removed from the field and assigned to an administrative job in a reshuffle announced last month.

"Most of those accused were involved in the events of the prison known as Site 4," Bolani said. Those charged also include non-commissioned officers and civilian staff.

Western officials and Sunni leaders have accused the Shi'ite-controlled Interior Ministry of harboring senior officers who, during Iraq's previous government, tolerated or encouraged Shi'ite militias to infiltrate the police forces.

A raid by U.S. forces in November 2005 at a secret Baghdad bunker found 173 men and teenage boys held by the Interior Ministry, many malnourished, beaten and showing signs of torture. Detainees in other Interior Ministry prisons have also shown signs of abuse.

Reform of Iraq's Interior Ministry is among a series of "benchmarks" for progress in Iraq that the U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said last month Washington was hoping to see.

Read the rest at the Washington Post

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