New Detainees Strain Iraq's Jails

"They described routine ill treatment or abuse while they were there," said a U.N. official in Baghdad who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. "Routine beatings, suspension by limbs for long periods, electric shock treatment to sensitive parts of the body, threats of ill treatment of close relatives. In one case, one of the detainees said that he was forced to sit on a sharp object which caused an injury."

An Interior Ministry spokesman, Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, denied that detainees are abused at the Kadhimiyah facility.

A government legal committee, created under the security plan to monitor prisons, was denied access to Kadhimiyah when it requested an inspection, said Jasim al-Bahadeli, who heads the committee.

Understanding the scope of the Interior Ministry's detention program is difficult because prisoners are scattered across more than 800 police stations throughout Iraq, and the tracking system is not up to the standards of other ministries, officials said.

"The concern with the [Interior Ministry] is it's a black hole and no one knows what's going on inside," said the Western official.

Under the security plan, the Iraqi army maintains at least five detention facilities in Baghdad, but these are filled with scores, if not hundreds, more people than they were designed to hold, Bahadeli said.

During a recent visit to a detention center in the town of Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad, his committee found 827 prisoners in four wards built for a total of 300 people. A visit to the detention center at Muthana air base in Baghdad revealed 272 people crammed into a facility intended for 75, said Maan Zeki al-Shimmari, another official with the committee.

In cells intended for individuals, "there were six people in every one," he said. "And if they want to use the bathroom, they have to do it inside these rooms using a bottle."

The spokesman for the Defense Ministry, Mohammed al-Askari, was not available for comment despite repeated attempts to reach him.

Ahmed Kadhum Latif, 20, said he was imprisoned a year ago at Muthana air base on suspicion of planting a roadside bomb. His account of his detention could not be independently confirmed, but it echoes the reports of human rights officials.

Soon after he was arrested, Latif said, guards demanded he confess. For a while, he refused. "They hung me in the air by my legs and beat me with a stick," he said in a telephone interview. "They beat me with pipes on my back and my stomach. They said, 'Will you be confessing now or not?' "

Latif said the guards, who were drinking alcohol, used electric shocks to burn his hands and held him for three days without food.