BREAKING NEWS: 'HORRIFIC' - Iraq detainees likened to Holocaust survivors
Sunnis demand international probe of secret prison at Baghdad ministry
NBC News and news services
Updated: 11:47 a.m. ET Nov. 16, 2005
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Conditions — including the use of torture — at a secret Baghdad detention facility were so “horrific” that some of the scores of men held there “looked like Holocaust survivors” when they were found, NBC News has learned.
Reporting on the developing story from Baghdad, NBC News correspondent Mike Boettcher on Wednesday said sources close to the investigation of the facility told him that photos of the detainees show “people covered in welts from torture. They show torture devices. They show men so emaciated they look like Holocaust survivors.”
Iraq’s deputy minister of the interior, in whose headquarters building the secret prison was found by U.S. forces Sunday, told Boettcher that “he had never seen anything like this in his life.”
Other sources confirmed NBC’s reporting, with the Interior ministry's under secretary for security, Maj. Gen. Hussein Kamal, telling CNN: "I saw signs of physical abuse by brutal beating, one or two detainees were paralyzed and some had skin peeling off various parts of their bodies."
As details of conditions at the prison continued to emerge, Iraq’s main Sunni Arab political party on Wednesday demanded an international investigation.
Omar Heikal of the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party told the New York Times that all the detainees were Sunni Arabs. He said it was now clear that majority Shiites in the U.S.-backed government were trying to suppress minority Sunnis ahead of the Dec. 15 parliamentary elections.
Interior Ministry officials acknowledged that the abused men were mostly Sunni Arabs. They said the abusers were Shiite police officers loyal to the Badr Organization militia. Hadi al-Amery, the head of the Badr Organization, denied any involvement, the New York Times reported.
'Not the only place'
Said Sunni leader Heikal in an official party statement: “Our information indicates that this is not the only place where torture is taking place.”
The party urged “the United Nations, the Arab League and humanitarian bodies to denounce these clear human rights violations, and we demand a fair, international probe so that all those who are involved in such practices will get their just punishment.”
Iraq's Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari confirmed Tuesday that more than 173 Interior Ministry prisoners were found malnourished and possibly tortured by government security forces at a Baghdad lockup.
Al-Jaafari’s comments came a day after an Iraqi Interior Ministry official said an investigation will be opened into allegations that Interior Ministry officers tortured suspects detained in connection with the insurgency.
“I was informed that there were 173 detainees held at an Interior Ministry prison and they appear to be malnourished. There is also some talk that they were subjected to some kind of torture,” al-Jaafari told reporters.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said U.S. and Iraqi forces went into the facility in Baghdad suspecting that individuals there might not have been appropriately handled or managed, and “they found things that concerned them.”
'Where are our brothers'
Tariq al-Hashimi, the secretary-general of the Iraqi Islamic Party, held up photos of the bodies of people who appear to have been subjected to torture and said: “This is what your Sunni brothers are being subjected too.”
He said his group had sent complaints in the past the government, but without response.
“We told them that if you don’t have information, then where are our brothers who were kidnapped by people wearing your uniforms, using your telecommunication equipment and driving your cars,” he said.
He said that if the investigation proves that the interior minister was involved, then he should resign. He also said the country’s top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, should “condemn these acts and stop covering” for the Shiite minister.
The U.N. Assistance Mission in Iraq issued a report on Monday depicting a bleak picture of the Iraqi legal system.
“Massive security operations by the Iraqi police and Special Forces continue to disregard instructions announced in August 2005 by the Ministry of the Interior to safeguard individual guarantees during search and detention operations,” the report said.
Insurgent sweep
Near the Syrian border Tuesday, U.S. and Iraqi forces swept through most of an insurgent stronghold, encountering pockets of fierce resistance, destroying five unexploded car bombs and killing at least 30 guerrilla fighters, the U.S. command reported.
Earlier this month, U.S. and Iraqi forces overran two other towns in the area — Husaybah and Karabilah. The Americans and their Iraqi allies plan to establish a long-term presence to prevent insurgents from returning across the border.
U.S. officials have said the Euphrates Valley campaign is also aimed at encouraging Sunni Arabs to vote in the Dec. 15 parliamentary elections without fear of insurgent reprisals. The Bush administration hopes a successful election will encourage many in the Sunni community to abandon the insurgency.
Also Tuesday, a Pentagon spokesman acknowledged that U.S. troops used white phosphorus as a weapon against insurgent strongholds during the battle of Fallujah last November. The spokesman, Lt. Col. Barry Venable, denied an Italian television news report that the spontaneously flammable material was used against civilians.
Venable said white phosphorous shells are a standard weapon and are not banned by any international weapons convention to which the U.S. is a signatory.
The battle for Fallujah was the most intense and deadly fight of the war, after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003. The city, about 35 miles west of Baghdad on the Euphrates River, was a key insurgent stronghold.
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