Torture complaint challenges Iraq constitution

Reuters/Michael Georgy | August 15 2005

BAGHDAD, Aug 15 (Reuters) - Iraq's draft constitution will enshrine democracy, its framers and their U.S. sponsors say; but allegations on Monday of torture in prisons raised troubling questions over human rights in the new Iraq.

In a video released by a senior local government official, 20 men who said they were held as suspected insurgents by Interior Ministry forces displayed welts and bruises and alleged they were beaten and given electric shocks among other tortures.

Just as a 1990 charter imposed by ousted President Saddam Hussein promised equal rights and the rule of law, but did not stop genocidal killing and torture, so the value of the constitution that may be presented on Monday will lie in how far fine words translate into reality in an Iraq riven with sectarian and ethnic strife.

It was not possible to verify the allegations endorsed by Awf Rahoumi, a deputy governor of Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, where sectarian tensions between once dominant Sunni Arabs and majority Shi'ite Muslims have been running high.

"They gave me electric shocks here," said one man, naked in the video, as he pointed to his genitals.

An Interior Ministry spokesman, asked about the video, said there had been no evidence of abuse in Iraqi prisons.

New York-based Human Rights Watch accused the new Iraqi police and security forces in January of the systematic use of arbitrary arrest, torture and ill-treatment of detainees and said the authorities have failed to investigate violations.

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Standing shirtless to show apparent welts and bruises, the men in Rahoumi's video said they were beaten with cables, given electric shocks and hung from the ceiling by hands bound behind their backs in Interior Ministry custody for up to three months.

Rahoumi, appearing in the film himself at what he said was the scene of the torture, voiced frustration with politicians who have spent weeks arguing over the new constitutional draft, concentrating on the issue of regional autonomy and federalism:

"I swear to God I will hit them over their heads with their federalism," said Rahoumi.

Aides to the deputy governor said he and a group of local policemen employed by the provincial authorities freed the men at the central government-run detention centre, run by the Interior Ministry, after learning they had been abused.

It was not clear how they were freed, where the prison was located nor what the men, described as labourers, are doing now.

"So far we have had no tangible evidence of abuse of prisoners in Iraqi jails. The Minister of Interior always orders security forces to respect human rights," said an Interior Ministry spokesman. "We are ready to take action against anyone who has been proven to have taken such actions."

Interior Minister Bayan Jabr, a member of one of the Shi'ite Islamist parties in the government coalition, has strenuously denied accusations that police and other ministry staff have been allowed to carry out sectarian reprisals against members of the Sunni minority that dominated Iraq under Saddam.

Videos, press conferences and accusations of torture and killings have become part of a propaganda campaign between opposing groups along Iraq's sectarian and ethnic divides.

"We know everything that's happening and there is a limit to our patience," said Rahoumi, who like the suspects, is a Sunni.

"I will meet with the interior minister and tell him and I will send an e-mail to the Pentagon."

Article 22(a) of the Iraqi constitution of 1990 stated: "The dignity of man is safeguarded. It is inadmissable to cause any physical or psychological harm." The charter also assured "no punishment, except in conformity with the law" and equal rights.

But arbitrary arrest, torture and summary execution went on until the fall of Saddam in 2003, human rights groups say.

Saddam faces a trial later this year over the killing of Shi'ite villagers and is expect to face genocide charges later.

These days, security forces and militias operate in the bloody chaos of suicide bombings, assassinations and kidnappings which have killed thousands of people, many of them members of the new security forces. Ministers insist, however, that they are fighting the insurgency without resort to illegal methods.

As Rahoumi sat in what he said was the scene of the torture, one of the men began to weep as he showed them his bruises.

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