Hundreds of Sunni men disappeared for months into a secret Baghdad prison under the jurisdiction of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s military office, where many were routinely tortured until the country’s Human Rights Ministry gained access to the facility, Iraqi officials say.
….”More than 100 were tortured. There were a lot of marks on their bodies,” said an Iraqi official familiar with the inspections. “They beat people, they used electricity. They suffocated them with plastic bags, and different methods.”
An internal U.S. Embassy report quoted Salim as saying that prisoners had told her they were handcuffed for three to four hours at a time in stress positions or sodomized. “One prisoner told her that he had been raped on a daily basis, another showed her his undergarments, which were entirely bloodstained,” the memo read.
….Maliki defended his use of special prisons and an elite military force that answers only to him; his supporters say he has had no choice because of Iraq’s precarious security situation. Maliki told The Times that he was committed to stamping out torture — which he blamed on his enemies.
It’s a nice bookend to this piece on Bagram under the Obama administration:
The prisoners, who were interviewed separately, all told very similar stories. Most of them said they had been beaten by American soldiers at the point of arrest before being taken to the prison.
Mirwais had half a row of teeth missing, which he said was from being struck with the butt of a gun by an American soldier.
No-one said they were visited by the International Committee of the Red Cross during their detention at the site, and they all said that their families did not know where they were.
In the small concrete cells, the prisoners said, a light was on all the time. They said they could not tell if it was night or day and described this as very disturbing.
Mirwais said he was made to dance to music by American soldiers every time he wanted to use the toilet.
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