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U.S. to Probe All Iraqi-Run Prisons
Iraqis pray in Baghdad in front of the coffin of Yasir Salah, 70, who relatives say died in detention after being arrested Sunday by Interior Ministry special forces.
(By Khalid Mohammed -- Associated Press)
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Jabr told reporters that the detention center had been opened by Iraq's previous government and that he had kept it open only because the country lacked adequate prisons. When he took office, he said, the hidden prison was used as an Interior Ministry investigation facility.
At a news conference, Jabr waved a sheaf of what appeared to be passports. "Those who were held inside the center were some of the most dangerous criminal terrorists of various Arab nationalities," he declared. "Let me tell you, those who were inside the shelter house were Arab killers, and here are their passports, IDs. They are Arabs and some of the most dangerous terrorists."
Among the reported 173 detainees was an Iraqi Shiite, crippled by polio, who had taken $1,000 from insurgents to detonate car bombs and booby traps that killed more than 60 Iraqis, Jabr said.
Jabr said that while U.S. generals found what they said were cases of torture, Casey, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, also told him that "all the suspects' files were in order -- which shows that our practices and procedures are correct." All the men at the center were there on a judge's orders, Jabr said.
U.S. military investigators, however, said troops had discovered 168 detainees and files for only 116 of them.
Scandal over the secret prison has forced the seven-month-old Shiite-led government to confront growing charges of mass illegal detentions, torture and killings of Sunni men. Members of the Sunni minority, locked in a struggle with the Shiite majority over the division of power in Iraq, say men dressed in Interior Ministry uniforms have repeatedly rounded up Sunni men from neighborhoods and towns. Bodies of scores of them have been found dumped by roadsides or in gullies.
Most of the allegations have been directed at the Badr Organization, the former armed wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shiite party that was founded in exile in Iran and is now the leading party in Iraq's government.
Some Iraqi Sunnis involved in the insurgency have said the sweeps by the Shiite-controlled security forces are putting more pressure on their groups than U.S. military raids and are one of the factors driving the Sunni resistance to try shifting -- at least temporarily -- from guerrilla warfare to politics.
The airing of the allegations may widen Iraq's sectarian rifts if Sunnis believe the government and the Americans are not trying to correct abuses. U.S. officers, however, maintain the American raid on the secret prison already has won back some Sunni confidence in U.S. efforts here.
Army Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, who oversees training of Iraq's security forces, said the prison case "points out the necessity for an internal oversight that clearly isn't there" for everyone taken into custody by Iraq's security and intelligence services.
"These kinds of things are a huge detriment to the morale of the force," Dempsey said. "I think the ministry understands it, or I hope it does. We're looking for them to take it seriously."
