Perspective: Jail house of horrors

The Serious Crimes Unit was regarded as one of the most corrupt elements of the British-mentored and trained constabulary in Iraq’s second city.

In Saddam Hussein’s time, local security forces dragged hundreds of people to the al-Jameat compound in the middle of the night. They were never heard of again. It became known as the “station of death”.

The two-storey building had been reopened by the British as a police station, part of the coalition’s optimistic attempts to restore order after Saddam’s overthrow.

Before long it was nicknamed “Gestapo HQ” by British officers. The horrors taking place behind its thick white walls were feared to compare with the sadistic excesses of the toppled dictatorship.

“When I visited the intelligence department at al-Jameat police station, I found prisoners stiff with fear, bound and gagged,” Stephen Grey, the journalist, wrote in the New Statesman.

No crime seemed too extreme for the unit, based at the police station in a once-pleasant middle-class neighbourhood. Its officers were blamed for death squad killings, extortion rackets and smuggling weapons from Iran.

Read the rest at the Times of London