UM del - 2004-05 (1. samling) - Bilag 30: Human Rights Watch Report: The New Iraq? Torture and ill-treatment of detainees in Iraqui custody

Summary......................................................................................................................................... 1I. Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 4II. Recommendations ................................................................................................................... 7III. Methodology ......................................................................................................................... 11IV. Legal Framework.................................................................................................................. 14V. Ministry of Interior Agencies and the Iraqi National Intelligence Service.................... 22VI. Torture and ill-treatment of members of political and armed groups ......................... 26VII. Arbitrary Arrest, torture and ill-treatment of criminal suspects .................................. 39VIII. Torture and ill-treatment of children held in adult facilities....................................... 62IX. Medical examinations and investigation of torture complaints..................................... 69X. Multinational Force advisers and reform efforts .............................................................. 76Appendix ...................................................................................................................................... 86Acknowledgements..................................................................................................................... 94

SummaryIraq is in the throes of a significant insurgency in which the Iraqi police and othersecurity forces are prime targets. The threat to the lives of police is real. In just the lastfour months of 2004, approximately 1,300 Iraqi police and scores other Iraqi securityforces have died at the hands of insurgents. This insurgency is occurring against abackdrop of general insecurity within Iraq that began soon after U.S.-led forces capturedBaghdad and Saddam Hussein’s government crumbled. The United States and its allieschose to stand by as widespread looting – driven by a multitude of motives – engulfedBaghdad and other Iraqi cities and towns.The initial days following the fall of the Saddam Hussein government set the tone forwhat turned out to be a devastating and violent occupation and political transition.Common criminals terrorize Iraqis with kidnappings and extortion schemes. Insurgentsdaily target vulnerable civilians, as well as military targets, with suicide bombers androadside bombs. Revenge killings started slowly but grew to be virtually daily eventswith perceived Ba’thist supporters, and later those identified as supporting the U.S.-ledoccupation, caught in the crosshairs. Cities once cited as evidence of the success of theU.S. led coalition’s occupation such as Mosul have become bloody battlegrounds. U.S.-led military operations against insurgent forces have resulted in unknown numbers ofcivilian casualties and destroyed property.During the U.S.-led military occupation following the fall of Baghdad, the United Statesand the United Kingdom, in accordance with the 1949 Geneva Conventions, hadprimary responsibility for the terms of detention, conditions of detention, treatment ofdetainees, and due process and fair trial protections of both captured insurgents andsuspected common criminals. Thousands of Iraqis were detained, and most released,during this period. Following the transfer of sovereignty on June 28, 2004 under SecurityCouncil resolution no. 1546, the so-called Multinational Force-Iraq (essentially U.S.forces and its allies) have maintained responsibility for the apprehension and detentionof captured insurgents and other security detainees, including “high value detainees”such as Saddam Hussein and former government officials and foreign terror suspects.The Iraqi Interim Government has assumed responsibility for the detention andprosecution of common criminal suspects and insurgents apprehended by Iraqi securityforces.1

Considerable international attention has rightly focused on torture and other abuseinflicted on detainees by U.S. forces at Abu Ghraib and other detention facilities in Iraq.Accountability for these violations, and confidence that they are no longer occurring, hasnot been achieved. At the same time, far less attention has been focused on thetreatment of persons in the custody of Iraqi authorities. In its February 2004 report tothe U.S. government on conditions in 2003, the International Committee of the RedCross (ICRC) found that Iraqi authorities had “allegedly whipped persons deprived oftheir liberty with cables on the back, kicked them in the lower parts of the body,including in the testicles, handcuffed and left them hanging from the iron bars of the cellwindows or doors in painful positions for several hours at a time, and burned them withcigarettes (signs on bodies witnessed by ICRC delegates). Several persons deprived oftheir liberty alleged that they had been made to sign a statement that they had not beenallowed to read.”2Public follow-up on this issue has been insufficient.This report details serious and widespread human rights violations by Iraqi police againstnational security suspects, including insurgents, and suspected common criminals sincelate 2003. As of mid-2004, Iraqi intelligence forces also committed serious violations,principally against members of political parties deemed to constitute a threat to statesecurity.Human Rights Watch investigations in Iraq found the systematic use of arbitrary arrest,prolonged pre-trial detention without judicial review, torture and ill-treatment ofdetainees, denial of access by families and lawyers to detainees, improper treatment ofdetained children, and abysmal conditions in pre-trial detention facilities. Trials aremarred by inadequate legal representation and the acceptance of coerced confessions asevidence. Persons tortured or mistreated have inadequate access to health care and norealistic avenue for legal redress. With rare exception, Iraqi authorities have failed toinvestigate and punish officials responsible for violations. International police advisers,primarily U.S. citizens funded through the United States, have turned a blind eye to theserampant abuses.The Iraqi Interim Government, led by Prime Minister Ayad ‘Allawi and presented to theinternational community as a sign that the violence and abuses of the Saddam Hussein2

International Committee of the Red Cross,Report of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) onthe Treatment by the Coalition Forces of Prisoners of War and Other Protected Persons by the GenevaConventions in Iraq During Arrest, Internment and Interrogation,February 2004, p. 16. This report, which hasnot been released by the ICRC, was reportedly leaked by a U.S. official to the media after the Abu Ghraibscandal broke in May 2004. Several of the detention facilities cited in the ICRC report in connection with theabuse of inmates were among those from where Human Rights Watch also received similar allegations,including the Major Crimes Directorate and police stations in al-Dora, al-Bayya’, al-Qanat and al-Salhiyya.

government are a thing of the past, appears to be actively taking part, or is at leastcomplicit, in these grave violations of fundamental human rights. Nor has the UnitedStates, the United Kingdom or other involved governments publicly taken up theseissues as a matter of concern.Human Rights Watch recognizes the enormous difficulties inherent in reconstituting apolice force in Iraq today, where prevailing security conditions affect all aspects of life andnew police recruits are among the prime targets of attack. Those involved in lawenforcement additionally have to contend with the legacy of the Saddam Husseingovernment, whose human rights record stood out as being among the worst anywhere.Iraq nonetheless remains bound by its obligations under international law. Internationallaw is unambiguous in that no government -- not Saddam Hussein’s, not the occupyingpowers and not the Iraqi Interim Government -- can justify ill-treatment of persons incustody in the name of security. International human rights agreements to which Iraq is aparty, most notably the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR),ensures basic protections for persons even in the midst of emergencies now faced by Iraq.3Human rights law recognizes that respect for rights and the rule of law cannot be builton fresh abuses. A new Iraqi government requires more than a change of leadership; itrequires a change of attitude about basic human dignity. The new authorities must stateunequivocally and publicly that the torture and ill-treatment of detainees will not betolerated. Equally, it must be made clear to law-enforcement personnel, many of whomheld the same jobs under the previous government at a time when torture was the norm,that such abuses are no longer acceptable and will not go unpunished. The current Iraqiauthorities have failed to deliver this message, as have their international advisers inassisting them to assume that responsibility. In allowing such abuses to go uncheckedwhile continuing to give absolute priority to bringing the security situation under control,it may prove very difficult further down the line to deliver a police force that the Iraqipeople can have confidence in, threatening the ultimate aim of lasting security wherebasic human rights are respected.

Article 4 of the ICCPR is explicit: during a state of emergency, states parties may not derogate from theprohibition on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, among other fundamental rights. Itreads: “1. In time of public emergency which threatens the life of the nation and the existence of which isofficially proclaimed, the States Parties to the present Covenant may take measures derogating from theirobligations under the present Covenant to the extent strictly required by the exigencies of the situation, providedthat such measures are not inconsistent with their other obligations under international law and do not involvediscrimination solely on the ground of race, colour, sex, language, religion or social origin. 2. No derogationfrom articles 6, 7 [torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment], 8 (paragraphs 1 and 2), 11, 15, 16 and 18may be made under this provision.” Iraq ratified the ICCPR in 1971.

I. IntroductionSince the appointment of the Iraqi Interim Government in June 2004, Iraqi officialshave stated on many occasions that respect for human rights and the rule of law remainsa priority, and that tough measures to bring the security situation under control and toreduce the level of violent crime would remain consistent with international humanrights standards. The findings of Human Rights Watch’s research has shown otherwise,and led to the conclusion that under the banner of bringing security and stability acrossIraq, tolerance of the abuse of detainees by government agencies remains high.On the basis of research conducted in Iraq from July to October 2004, Human RightsWatch found that the abuse of detainees by the Iraqi police and intelligence forces hasbecome routine and commonplace. The police and intelligence services conduct arrestswithout warrants issued by an appropriate judicial authority,4frequently on the basis ofinformation provided by “secret informants” from within the police force. Manypersons reported being beaten at the time of their arrest and being very tightly bound inhandcuffs or tightly blindfolded. Contrary to the provisions of Iraq’s Code of CriminalProcedure (CCP), which requires a defendant to be brought before an investigatingjudge within twenty-four hours of arrest,5the vast majority had been held withoutappearing before a judge for far longer – in some cases for almost four months.The majority of the detainees interviewed for this report stated that torture and ill-treatment during the initial period of detention was commonplace in facilities under thejurisdiction of the Ministry of Interior’s specialized police agencies. Methods of tortureor ill-treatment cited included routine beatings to the body using a variety of implementssuch as cables, hosepipes and metal rods. Detainees reported kicking, slapping andpunching; prolonged suspension from the wrists with the hands tied behind the back;electric shocks to sensitive parts of the body, including the earlobes and genitals; andbeing kept blindfolded and/or handcuffed continuously for several days. In severalcases, the detainees suffered what may be permanent physical disability.Conditions of pre-trial detention are poor. Detainees reported receiving little or no foodor water for several days at a stretch, and being held in severely overcrowded cells withno room for lying down to sleep, without air conditioning, and in unhygienic conditions.

Many detainees also reported being beaten at the time of their arrest and being verytightly bound in handcuffs or tightly blindfolded.There is little protection from self-incrimination. In many high profile cases, detaineesreported that Ministry of Interior officials invited journalists to photograph them andshow their photographs in local newspapers or on television. The press commonlylabeled them as “criminals” before any preliminary investigations had taken place.Another very common complaint made by such detainees is that police interrogatorsmade them sign statements without being informed of their content or having theopportunity to read them beforehand. They frequently reported that they were forced tosign or fingerprint such statements while blindfolded, often at the end of aninterrogation session during which they were physically abused. Having undergone suchtreatment, in many such cases followed by Human Rights Watch through the courts,investigative judges released the detainees upon questioning because of insufficientevidence (see Section VII).Corruption is a major impediment to respect for basic rights. One of the most commoncomplaints made by detainees was of police officials threatening them with indefinitedetention if they failed to pay them sums of money. The vast majority interviewed byHuman Rights Watch said that extortion was rife, and that the refusal or inability to paysuch bribes resulted in the detainees remaining in custody until they were eventuallyreferred to court, or released without charge, often several weeks later: “The realcriminals, who are able to pay with the proceeds of their crimes, get out, while the poorones remain behind” was a constant theme running through the accounts recorded byHuman Rights Watch.6Officials at detention facilities routinely denied relatives and defense counsel access todetainees. Although several detainees said they had seen lawyers coming into their cellto talk to others held with them, this appeared to be the exception rather than the rule.Friends or relatives who were able to gain access to detainees, again the exception ratherthan the rule, told Human Rights Watch that they secured such access only through thepayment of bribes to police officials, or through highly-placed connections, or both.Instances of access as recorded by Human Rights Watch only applied to the MajorCrimes Directorate facility in al-‘Amiriyya, one of the main pre-trial detention facilities.

The organization was unable to find any instances where either legal counsel or relativesof detainees were able to gain access – even through illicit means – to other detentionfacilities under Ministry of Interior jurisdiction, notably those located within theministry’s compound.There is little indication that any serious measures have been taken to enforce existinglaws and put an end to these practices. Human Rights Watch is aware of only a handfulof cases in which investigations into allegations of torture or ill-treatment by Iraqi lawenforcement personnel resulted in the conviction of the perpetrators, and none of thoseconvicted received prison time. An official acknowledgment that police had carried outarrests without warrant came from the minister of interior in response to questionsasked by several members of the Interim National Assembly in its October 18, 2004session: the press quoted Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib as saying that, “There weremistakes in arresting some people without a warrant according to the law, and we willwork hard to stop it.”7Human Rights Watch was not aware of criminal proceedingsthat the Iraqi Interim Government may have since commenced with regard to theoffending officials or of measures adopted to prevent future recurrence.The vulnerability of detainees held by the Ministry of Interior’s specialized agencies iscompounded by the Ministry’s unwillingness to institute reforms promulgated by theCoalition Provisional Authority (CPA).8In June 2003 the CPA transferred responsibilityfor the management of all detention and prison facilities previously under thejurisdiction of the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs and the Ministry of Interior tothe Ministry of Justice.9Accompanying the order that introduced this change was anImplementing Memorandum that set out basic standards for the operation of all suchfacilities, regulating matters including conditions of detention, medical services,discipline and punishment, complaints by prisoners, and inspection of facilities.10To78

In accordance with Article 26(A) of the Transitional Administration Law (TAL), “Except as otherwise provided inthis Law, the laws in force in Iraq on 30 June 2004 shall remain in effect unless and until rescinded or amendedby the Iraqi Transitional Government in accordance with this Law.” Just prior to sovereignty transfer, the CPAAdministrator transferred authority over the Iraqi prison system to the minister of justice (CPA/ORD/28 June2004/100: Transition of Laws, Regulations, Orders, and Directives Issued by the Coalition ProvisionalAuthority). Section 6(2) of CPA Order 100 stated that “… the minister of justice shall remain in full control of theIraqi prison system and shall report periodically to the Prime Minister regarding the status of the Iraqi prisonsystem.... ” To Human Rights Watch’s knowledge, no further amendments to legislation introduced by the CPArelating to the management of prison and detention facilities have since been made.CPA/ORD/8 June 2003/10 (Management of Detention and Prison Facilities).

Human Rights Watch’s knowledge, these regulations are not applied in practice to thefacilities controlled by the Ministry of Interior, which continues to run a parallel systemof detentions beyond the reach of Ministry of Justice officials and inspectors.The U.S. government has devoted considerable resources towards providinginternational advisers to assist the Iraqi Interim Government in the training andequipping of Iraq’s security and police forces. Unfortunately, these advisers, workingclosely with the Ministry of Interior on law enforcement and detention issues, haveapparently given low priority to addressing the crucial issue of detainee abuse by theIraqi police as they work towards increasing the capability and effectiveness of theseforces. A number of key advisers work at the level of the Ministry, while others are onsite at detention facilities under its jurisdiction, but Human Rights Watch is not aware ofany serious measures taken by these advisers to assist the Iraqi authorities in addressingissues related to the abuse of detainees (see Section X).There is a great and urgent need for access to detention facilities by independentmonitors. At this writing, the ICRC’s ability to conduct regular visits to places ofdetention other than those run by Multinational Force authorities remained limited forsecurity reasons. No international human rights organization has had access todetention facilities under the jurisdiction of the Iraqi Ministries of Interior or Justice todate, including Human Rights Watch, whose own request for access remainsoutstanding. Human Rights Watch understands that discussions were underway to grantstaff of the Ministry of Human Rights access to Iraqi Interim Government-run facilities,but at the time the organization carried out its research for this report, few such visitswere taking place.

establishment of a transparent and independent investigation into allegationsof routine and widespread torture by the Ministry of Interior’s Major CrimesDirectorate and the Criminal Intelligence Directorate in particular.•••Conduct a medical examination of detainees alleging abuse when they aretransferred to the jurisdiction of the courts.Ensure that prisoners have access to medical care on a regular basis.Comply with international standards relating to the treatment of children indetention, in particular by holding them in facilities separate from adultdetainees and establishing interim measures to hold possible childrenseparately from adults until authorities establish age in each case.Compensate victims of torture, ill-treatment, and arbitrary detentionadequately and speedily.

On Administration of Justice:•Limit the use of confessions as a basis for pre-trial detention or convictionto confessions freely made in the presence of counsel and ratified withintwenty-four hours before a judge and the defendant’s counsel. Suspend inanticipation of later abrogation those provisions of the CCP that permit theuse of confessions and other evidence obtained through torture or othercoercive methods.Take steps to ensure that arrests by the Ministry of Interior’s lawenforcement agencies comply with domestic legislation that requires theissuance of arrest warrants from a judicial authority.Take immediate steps to end widespread extortion of detainees by policeofficials. Thoroughly investigate all allegations of abuse by such personnel,and take disciplinary action and bring prosecutions as appropriate against allthose found responsible.

On Providing Greater Access and Transparency:•Ensure that all detention facilities run by Ministry of Interior agencies fallunder the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice, as is required by legislationcurrently in force. Such facilities should include those located within theMinistry of Interior’s compound. All detainees should be held inrecognizable places of detention that are accessible to governmentinspection, independent monitors, relatives, and defense counsel.Grant regular and unimpeded access to these facilities to the Ministry ofHuman Rights, which should be encouraged to regularly assess treatment ofdetainees and conditions of detention. The findings of such visits should bemade public.Ensure and sustain conditions necessary for the ICRC to conduct visits topre-trial and post-conviction detention facilities.Grant access to detention facilities under the authority of the Ministry ofInterior to independent and qualified domestic and international monitoringorganizations. Authorities should allow such visits to be unimpeded andoccurring at frequent intervals.

On Meeting International Standards:•Ensure that conditions in detention centers conform to internationalstandards, including the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatmentof Prisoners and the Body of Principles for the Protection of All Personsunder Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment. Detainees are entitled tosufficient food and water, prompt access to medical treatment, adequatewashing facilities, and clean and adequate bedding. They must not besubject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.Ratify the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman orDegrading Treatment or Punishment (Convention against Torture).Consideration should also be given to becoming a party to the OptionalProtocol to the Convention against Torture, which allows independentinternational experts to conduct regular visits to places of detention withinthe territory of state parties, to assess the conditions of detention and tomake recommendations for improvements.Implement the general recommendations made by the Committee againstTorture in May 2002 and by the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture in2003, to establish a fully independent complaints mechanism for personswho are held in state custody.

To the government of the United States and other Multinational Forcegovernments•Ensure that advisers to the Multinational Force providing assistance to theIraqi government on policing and detentions give immediate and adequatepriority to the investigation of allegations of the torture or ill-treatment ofdetainees by Iraqi police forces.Urge and assist the creation of appropriate mechanisms for investigatingallegations of abuse of detainees in facilities run by the Ministry of Interior’sspecialized agencies, in particular the Major Crimes Directorate and theCriminal Intelligence Directorate.Recommend an increase in the number of Multinational Force advisersdeployed in detention facilities run by the Ministry of Interior. Clarify therole of such advisers with regard to the monitoring of detainee treatment inthese facilities. Establish a mechanism allowing for the timely and effectivereporting of instances where physical or other abuse of detainees occurs infacilities where Multinational Force advisers are present.Assist the Iraqi authorities in establishing a mechanism for the promptinvestigation of allegations of torture or ill-treatment at the hands ofMinistry of Interior law enforcement officials.Encourage and assist the Iraqi government in establishing an independentcomplaints mechanism, which could include the appointment of anombudsman for penal and detention matters, to receive and investigatecomplaints by detainees of physical or other abuse by detaining officials.Assist the Iraqi government to comply with international standards relatingto the treatment of children in detention, in particular by holding them infacilities separate from adult detainees and establishing interim measures tohold possible children separately from adults until age is established in eachcase.Ensure that assistance to the Iraqi government is not used to contribute tohuman rights violations.In the context of assistance provided to the Iraqi government, send a clearand consistent message that respect for human rights is integral and essentialto the success of any security policy, including anti-terrorism operations.

To the international donor community•Closely monitor any police, security and anti-terrorism assistance to the Iraqigovernment to ensure that human rights standards are strictly observed bypolice and intelligence forces.Provide human rights training as an integral component of all capacitybuilding and training programs involving the police and intelligenceagencies. Such training should include a component designed to stop theuse of torture and other cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment as aninterrogation technique or punishment.Ensure that aid given includes assistance for the development and supportof local human rights groups with a monitoring capacity and thedevelopment of an independent human rights commission.

III. MethodologyHuman Rights Watch interviewed ninety current and former detainees in Iraq betweenJuly and October 2004, of whom seventy-two alleged they had been tortured or ill-treated in detention. At the time of the interviews, seventy-four of them were in custodyand the remaining sixteen had been released.This report focuses on three categories of detainees. The first category comprisestwenty-one people apparently arrested for their alleged affiliation with an armed groupor an opposition political party or for reasons of state security that may be related totheir political party affiliation. The legal authority for such arrests was not specified. Incases investigated by Human Rights Watch, such persons were detained by the police orthe intelligence service for an indeterminate period and then released without the caseever reaching the courts. Human Rights Watch’s investigation of these detentionsfocused on suspected members or sympathizers of Shi’a cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s MahdiArmy (Jayshal-Mahdi),an armed group established in June 2003 in contravention of CPAregulations governing armed forces and militias in Iraq,11and of theHizbullahMovementin Iraq, a political party established in Iran in 1982 in opposition to the Saddam Husseingovernment, and which abandoned armed opposition following its return to Iraq.Human Rights Watch interviewed most of these persons after they had been releasedfrom detention without having been charged.

The second category comprises fifty-four criminal suspects whose cases were referred tothe Central Criminal Court of Iraq in Baghdad. The CPA established the CentralCriminal Court in July 2003 to hear serious criminal offenses, including terrorism,abduction, money laundering, drug trafficking and acts of sabotage.12Suspectedinsurgents implicated in criminal offenses and organized crime members would normallybe referred to the Central Criminal Court. The court also has jurisdiction to hear seriousoffenses committed during a declared state of emergency.13Most of these casesinvestigated by Human Rights Watch had been referred to the court by the MajorCrimes Directorate and the Criminal Intelligence Directorate, while a smaller numberhad been referred by the Directorate of Ministry Security and Welfare (see Section V).The third category comprises fifteen detainees held at seven different police stations onvarious criminal charges, including theft and murder.14Human Rights Watchinterviewed them upon referral to one of Baghdad’s criminal courts other than theCentral Criminal Court; they were in court for their investigative hearing or trial.Their accounts regarding treatment in detention were largely consistent with thoseobtained from detainees referred to the Central Criminal Court. In this context, HumanRights Watch also met with five investigative judges at four of the criminal courtscovering the al-Rusafa sector (eastern Baghdad) and the al-Karkh sector (westernBaghdad). Extracts from the accounts of five of these detainees are contained in theappendix to this report.All cases highlighted in this report involved male detainees, among them threechildren.15Human Rights Watch did not have the opportunity to interview femaledetainees, having no access to places of detention where they were held and there being12

CPA/ORD/11 July 2003/13, as amended (The Central Criminal Court of Iraq). The felonies falling within theCentral Criminal Court’s jurisdiction are principally, but not exclusively: terrorism; organized crime;governmental corruption; acts intended to destabilize democratic institutions or processes; and violence basedon race, nationality, ethnicity or religion. The court also hears cases where a determination is made that acriminal defendant may not be able to obtain a fair trial in a local court (Section 18 (2) of CPA Order 13 asamended on April 22, 2004). The CPA published its intent to establish the Central Criminal Court in a PublicNotice (Regarding the Creation of a Central Criminal Court of Iraq and Adjustments to the Criminal ProcedureCode), dated June 18, 2003.Order for Safeguarding National Security, No. 1 of 2004, of July 3, 2004. Article 7(1) reads: “The CentralCriminal Court of Iraq shall assume the review of serious crimes committed during the period of the state ofemergency, and which are referred by a judge of jurisdiction including crimes of murder, robbery, rape,kidnapping, destruction, bombing or burning or damaging of public or private property, and possession ofmilitary weapons and their ammunition, or the manufacturing, transportation, smuggling or trading of suchweapons.”The seven police stations are: al-Sa’doun, Balat al-Shuhada’, al-Masbah, al-Za’faraniyya, al-Muthanna,Baghdad al-Jadida, and Jisr Diyala.

very few female referrals to the Central Criminal Court during the period in which theresearch was conducted.The kinds of allegations of physical abuse recorded by Human Rights Watch areconsistent with medical reports detailing the types of external trauma identified byforensic doctors in typical cases involving defendants referred by the criminal courts toBaghdad’s Medico-Legal Institute.16Of the thirty-seven cases examined at the Institute,medical records identified external injuries such as recent scar tissue, bruising,contusions, or skin discoloration in twenty of them. Human Rights Watch also made itsown observations of the physical condition of the detainees it interviewed, some ofwhom had visible injuries that appeared consistent with the type of treatment theyalleged. Information provided by investigative judges to Human Rights Watch onindividual cases also supported the organization’s observations on the nature and scopeof abuse taking place at the hands of the Iraqi police.This report does not address the treatment of the roughly 8,500 security detainees heldby the United States military at three main prisons in Iraq and at temporary battlefielddetention centers.17While the types of allegations of torture and ill-treatment recorded by Human RightsWatch related to all categories of detainees, the largest group interviewed were thecriminal suspects referred to the Central Criminal Court. In addition to conductinginterviews, Human Rights Watch also attended investigative hearings of dozens ofothers. Most of the defendants were at the pre-trial stage and had been brought to courtto have their statements taken down by the court’s judicial investigator (al-muhaqqiqal-‘adli)and then to face the charges against them before an investigative judge (qadial-tahqiq).In the course of documenting cases of torture and ill-treatment for this report, HumanRights Watch received many other allegations of police abuse that it was unable tofollow up or verify. Security conditions on the ground placed constraints on theorganization’s ability to travel outside the Baghdad area to interview former detainees,family members, eyewitnesses or officials in other cities. In the case of al-Najaf, forexample, Human Rights Watch arranged for recently released detainees to travel toBaghdad to be interviewed. Within Baghdad, the organization was able to interview

IV. Legal FrameworkWith the declared transfer of sovereignty, the Law of Administration for the State ofIraq for the Transitional Period (Transitional Administration Law or TAL) came intoeffect. Issued by the CPA on March 8, 2004, following its adoption by Iraq’s InterimGoverning Council (IGC), the law is considered to be effective until “the formation ofan elected Iraqi government pursuant to a permanent constitution,” envisaged for theend of 2005 following general elections.18The TAL stipulates that all Iraqi citizens areequal before the law, and that their rights to freedom from arbitrary arrest, unlawfuldetention, unfair trials, and torture are protected by law.19An Annex to the TAL, issuedon June 1, 2004, conferred to Iraq’s Council of Ministers the authority to “issue orderswith the force of law” with the unanimous approval of the state’s Presidency Council,comprising the president and two deputy presidents.20Under the occupation by United States and other coalition forces, responsibility for thesetting up of law enforcement agencies lay with the CPA, headed by its thenadministrator, L. Paul Bremer. This took place in coordination with officials representedin the IGC and its relevant Ministries.21After June 28, 2004, that responsibility wastransferred to the Iraqi Interim Government, but with the Multinational Force having“the authority to take all necessary measures to contribute to the maintenance of securityand stability in Iraq” in accordance with the terms of United Nations (U.N.) SecurityCouncil Resolution no. 1546 of June 8, 2004, and its annexes.22The resolution sets outthe responsibilities of the Multinational Force, among them “building the capability of

Annex to the Law of Administration for the State of Iraq in the Transitional Period, June 1, 2004 (Section Two:Institutions and Powers of the Iraqi Interim Government).The IGC was appointed by the CPA on July 13, 2003 (CPA/REG/13 July 2003/6 – Governing Council of Iraq),and dissolved itself upon the appointment of the Iraqi Interim Government on June 1, 2004 (CPA/REG/9 June2004/9 – Governing Council’s Dissolution).S/RES/1546 (2004). The annexes to the resolution, texts of letters from Iraqi Interim Government PrimeMinister Ayad ‘Allawi and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, both dated June 5, 2004, to the president of theSecurity Council, outline the role of the Multinational Force in achieving security and stability in Iraq.

the Iraqi security forces [including the police] and institutions, through a programme ofrecruitment, training, mentoring, and monitoring.”23The annexes to the resolutionreflect the close coordination envisaged between the Iraqi Interim Government and theMultinational Force on security matters and combating violent crime.24Following its appointment in early June 2004,25the Iraqi Interim Governmentannounced its intention to “establish appropriate security structures” to enable Iraqiforces to progressively take on the responsibility for security, operating within theframework of bodies set up under CPA authority to formulate policy in this regard.These bodies include the Ministerial Committee for National Security26and the IraqiNational Intelligence Service.27At his first press conference on June 20, Prime MinisterAyad ‘Allawi announced a new strategy for national security, involving thereorganization of military and security forces, which would be coordinated through theMinisterial Committee for National Security and in consultation with U.S. and U.K.advisers. The planned changes included bringing the CPA-created Iraqi Civil DefenseCorps under army control as part of the Iraqi National Guard and the creation ofemergency response units for special operations. Special police units would also becreated to be deployed “in the frontlines” of the battle against terrorism and sabotage,and a new directorate for national security established.28The Ministry of Interior2324

CPA/ORD/4 April 2004/68 (Ministerial Committee for National Security). The Order provided for theestablishment of the Ministerial Committee for National Security (MCNS) “under the authority, direction andcontrol of the Administrator of the CPA … pending transfer of full governance authority to the Iraqi InterimGovernment.” Currently headed by the prime minister, its permanent members are the ministers of defense,interior, foreign affairs, justice and finance. The MCNS also has several permanent advisory members, with themultinational force commander invited to participate in its meetings as appropriate. With regard to its role,Order 68 only states that this is “to facilitate and coordinate national security policy among the Ministries andagencies of the Iraqi government tasked with national security issues” (Section 1(1)).CPA/ORD/1 April 2004/69 (Delegation of Authority to Establish the Iraqi National Intelligence Service).See“Text of the Prime Minister’s statement at the press conference on the future of Iraq’s defense andsecurity”,Al-Sabah Al-Jadeed,June 22, 2004.Seealso Jim Krane, “Iraq’s interim leader plans security shake-up,”Associated Press,June 21, 2004; Tom Lasseter and Hannah Allam, “Iraqi leader outlines securityoverhaul; Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi announced an ambitious plan for reestablishing an Iraqi military,including an air force, coast guard and special forces,”Knight Ridder News Service,June 21, 2004; SadeqRahim and ‘Ali Khalil, “’Allawi accuses external elements of involvement in carrying out terrorist operations andannounces the establishment of a general directorate for national security,”Azzaman,June 21, 2004. Furtherstatements regarding the creation of a new security agency were made by the prime minister at another pressconference on July 16, when he announced the arrest of alleged key figures fromal-Qaeda, See“Creation of anew security apparatus to crack down on terrorism and its accomplices: renewed clashes in al-Falluja and theretrieval of a second decapitated body from the Tigris River”,Al-Mada,July 17, 2004; and “’Allawi announces

reportedly appointed a new security adviser to assist in the establishment of a newgeneral security directorate modeled on the erstwhile General Security Directorate(Mudiriyyatal-Amn al-‘Amma),one of the agencies of the Saddam Hussein governmentdissolved by the CPA in May 2003.29On July 3, 2004, the Iraqi Interim Government passed the Order for SafeguardingNational Security (No. 1 of 2004 –Amr al-Difa’ ‘An al-Salama al-Wataniyya),introducingemergency legislation to the statute books and enabling the prime minister to declaremartial law for up to sixty days at a time, renewable with the approval of the PresidencyCouncil.30The Order also provides for the imposition of curfews; the closure of roads,sea lanes and airspace; restrictions or bans on public gatherings; the disbanding ortemporary suspension of associations, unions and other entities; surveillance onelectronic and other communications; and wide powers to search property and to detainsuspects. In announcing the Order at a press conference on July 7, Iraq’s ministers ofjustice and human rights pointed to provisions requiring that persons may not bearrested except upon the issuance of arrest warrants by the judicial authorities,31andwould be brought before an investigative judge within twenty-four hours of arrest.32The Order, however, does provide for arrests or searches without warrant in “extremeexigent circumstances.”33While the prime minister’s “decisions and procedures aresubject to review by the Court of Cassation,”34the Order neither defines suchcircumstances nor attempts to place limits on their interpretation.35The human rightsminister, Bakhtiar Amin, gave assurances that any violations or abuses in the

Under Article 1 of the Order, a state of emergency may be declared “upon the exposure of the people of Iraqto a danger of grave proportions, threatening the lives of individuals and emanating from an ongoing campaignof violence by any number of people, for the purpose of preventing the establishment of a broad basedgovernment in Iraq, or to hinder the peaceful participation of all Iraqis in the political process, or for any otherpurpose.”See,for example, Betsy Pisik, “Human rights a priority in Iraq; Official tried to allay fears on security law, hitsU.N.,”The Washington Times,July 9, 2004.Order for Safeguarding National Security, Article 4.Ibid.,Article 3 (First and Second).Ibid.,Article 9 (Second).

Article 15(B) of the TAL, for example, states that “[E]xtreme exigent circumstances, as determined by a courtof competent jurisdiction, may justify a warrantless search, but such exigencies shall be narrowly construed. Inthe event that a warrantless search is carried out in the absence of an extreme exigent circumstance, theevidence so seized, and any other evidence found derivatively from such search, shall be inadmissible inconnection with a criminal charge, unless the court determines that the person who carried out the warrantlesssearch believed reasonably and in good faith that the search was in accordance with the law.”

implementation of emergency legislation would be investigated by his Ministry: “myoffice will have the full ability to investigate lapses.”36Other measures adopted as part of the declared intention to crack down on violentcrime included the reintroduction of the death penalty, which the CPA had suspended inJune 2003.37Human Rights Watch opposes the death penalty in all circumstancesbecause of its inherent cruelty and irreversibility. The Iraqi Interim Government passedOrder 3 of 2004 on August 8; the Order reintroduced capital punishment for a range ofoffenses, including certain crimes affecting internal state security, public safety,premeditated murder, and drug trafficking.38It also introduced the death penalty forabduction.39Government officials argued that capital punishment would serve as adeterrent against such crimes, while its implementation would be “very limited and onlyin exceptional cases.”40In August 2004, Prime Minister Ayad ‘Allawi announced an amnesty for a range ofoffenses connected with the possession of weapons and explosive devices, the failure toinform the authorities about the planning or financing of terrorism or other acts ofviolence, participation with terrorist groups in acts intended to undermine internal statesecurity or public welfare and property, and giving refuge to persons being sought by thejudicial authorities for terrorist or violent crimes or in connection with crimesperpetrated by the former Iraqi government. Order 2 of 2004, passed on August 4,

Order for the Reintroduction of the Death Penalty, Number 3 of 2004, August 8, 2004. Order 3 of 2004 alsoprovided for the commutation to life imprisonment of death sentences passed and upheld prior to the Order’seffectiveness (Article 7). Human Rights Watch knows of several death sentences passed prior to August 2004,most if not all for premeditated murder. On October 24, 2004, Iraq’s minister of justice said in a media interviewthat between 150 and 160 “Arab fighters” have been charged with carrying out acts of terrorism and may facethe death penalty if convicted by the criminal courts. They were said to include Egyptian, Jordanian, Lebanese,Moroccan, Syrian and Yemeni nationals as well as IraniansSee“About 150 Arab fighters face death penalty inIraq: minister,”Agence France Presse,October 24, 2004.Citing Iraq’s minister of human rights, Bakhtiar Amin, at a press conference in Baghdad on August 8, 2004.SeeFu’ad Jassem Hammudi, “Reintroduction of the death penalty,”Al-Nahdhah,August 9, 2004, and“Safeguarding the security of Iraq, its people and human rights: reintroduction of the death penalty,”Al-SabahAl-Jadeed,August 9, 2004.

excluded from the terms of the amnesty those found guilty of murder, abduction, rape,robbery, and harming or destroying public or private assets.41The Iraqi Interim Government did not declare a state of emergency until November 7,2004, on the eve of a U.S.-led military offensive on the town of al-Falluja. However,Iraqi security and intelligence forces carried out widespread arrests without judicialwarrant of both suspected criminal offenders and members of political parties wellbefore the emergency decree was promulgated. In that context, allegations of the tortureand ill-treatment of detainees were rife.The Iraqi Interim Government, as well as the successor Iraqi Transitional Governmentthat will emerge after the January 30, 2005 elections, have legal obligations under humanrights treaty law and customary law. All successor governments of Iraq are bound byearlier governments’ treaty ratifications. Under the ICCPR, every person has the right:to protection against arbitrary arrest42; to be informed promptly of the charges againsthim or her; to be brought promptly before a judge and entitled to trial within areasonable time or be released43; to be treated with dignity while in detention44; toprotection from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment45; andto due process and fair trial,46including the right to counsel.4741

ICCPR, Article 9. To comply with Article 9, the state must specify in its legislation the grounds on whichindividuals may be deprived of their liberty and the procedures to be used in enforcing arrests and detentions.Only acts conducted in accordance with such rules are considered lawful, thus restricting the discretion ofindividual arresting officers. Moreover, the prohibition on arbitrariness means that the deprivation of liberty, evenif provided for by law, must still be proportional to the reasons for arrest, as well as predictable. The arrests ofpersons for the exercise of their fundamental rights is considered arbitrary and in violation of internationallaw. Article 9 also specifically requires that detainees be immediately informed of the reasons for their arrestand promptly be told of any charges against them, and that they be brought promptly before a judgeempowered to rule upon the lawfulness of the detention.ICCPR’s Article 9(3) states: “Anyone arrested or detained on a criminal charge shall be brought promptlybefore a judge or other officer authorized by law to exercise judicial power and shall be entitled to trial within areasonable time or to release.”4445464743

ICCPR, Article 14(3)(b) (preparation of the defense). Human Rights Committee (HRC) General Comment 13states that under the ICCPR, “the accused must have adequate time and facilities for the preparation of hisdefense and to communicate with counsel of his own choosing. … this subparagraph requires counsel tocommunicate with the accused in conditions giving full respect for the confidentiality of their communications.Lawyers should be able to counsel and to represent their clients in accordance with their establishedprofessional standards and judgment without any restrictions, influences, pressures or undue interference fromany quarter.” U.N. Doc. HRI/GEN/1/Rev.6 at 135 (2003) para. 9. The U.N. Basic Principles on the Role of

The prohibition against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment orpunishment is among the most fundamental principles of international law. As theHuman Rights Committee (HRC), the international body responsible for monitoringcompliance with the ICCPR, has stated, the aim of the prohibition against torture andother mistreatment “is to protect both the dignity and the physical and mental integrityof the individual. It is the duty of the State party to afford everyone protection throughlegislative and other measures as may be necessary against [torture and othermistreatment], whether inflicted by people acting in their official capacity, outside theirofficial capacity or in a private capacity.”48The Committee against Torture has expressedconcern that deferral of notification of arrest coupled with deferral of access to counselin the first forty-eight hours amounts to detention "incommunicado, thereby creatingconditions which might lead to abuses of authority by agents of the State."49The HRC calls on states, among other things to put into effect the following to preventtorture:Provisions should also be made against incommunicado detention. Inthat connection, States parties should ensure that any places of detentionbe free from any equipment liable to be used for inflicting torture or ill-treatment. The protection of the detainee also requires that prompt andregular access be given to doctors and lawyers and, under appropriatesupervision when the investigation so requires, to family members. …Itis important for the discouragement of violations under article 7[prohibition on torture] that the law must prohibit the use ofadmissibility in judicial proceedings of statements or confessionsobtained through torture or other prohibited treatment.50

Committee against Torture,Consideration of First Periodic Report of the United Kingdom and NorthernIreland,CAT/C/SR.91, November 15, 1991. The CAT reiterated its concern about incommunicado interrogationin the United Kingdom's second periodic report.SeeCommittee against Torture,Consideration of SecondPeriodic Report of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,para. 2950 Human Rights Committee, General Comment 20, Article 7 (Forty-fourth session, 1992), Compilation ofGeneral Comments and General Recommendations Adopted by Human Rights Treaty Bodies, U.N. Doc.HRI\GEN\1\Rev.1 at 30 (1994), paras. 11 & 12.

The Human Rights Committee also called on states to ensure that thoseresponsible for torture or other mistreatment “whether by encouraging,ordering, tolerating or perpetrating prohibited acts, must be heldresponsible. … Complaints [of mistreatment] must be investigatedpromptly and impartially by competent authorities so as to make theremedy effective.”51Iraq’s new government must adopt legislation that will bring its laws in line withinternational human rights standards. As it currently stands, Iraq’s CCP falls short ofthese standards in a number of significant ways, failing to address fundamental rights,such as the right of criminal suspects to remain silent, the right to be represented by legalcounsel at all stages of the proceedings, the right not to have coerced confessions usedin evidence against them in court, and the right to be presumed innocent until provenguilty before a court of law.Nevertheless, there are a number of protections in the CCP that, if implemented, wouldcontribute to the better protection of persons deprived of their liberty. Persons may notbe arrested without a warrant (except in circumstances prescribed by law,52such ascrimes committedin flagrante delicto).53Defendants must be brought before aninvestigating judge within twenty-four hours of arrest.54The judge may renew theirperiod of detention for not more than fifteen days on each occasion, provided that thetotal period does not exceed six months. If the criminal investigation is not completedwithin six months, authorization for further extensions of the detention period must beobtained from the relevant criminal court.55Prohibited is the use of “any illegal methodto influence the accused to extract a confession.”56Ill-treatment, threats to cause harm,enticement, promises, psychological influence, or the use of drugs or intoxicants areconsidered illegal methods.57Officials found guilty of torturing or ill-treating detaineesin their custody are punishable by up to fifteen years’ imprisonment under the PenalCode.58Detainees have the right to submit a complaint regarding a threat or harmcaused to them with a view to initiating criminal proceedings against the perpetrators.5951525354555657

The CPA amended a number of articles in the CCP and the Penal Code after April 2003,some of which addressed the shortcomings of these laws, and which at this writing havethe force of law, but which will need to be addressed by a new Iraqi government.Among these is the total prohibition on torture60and the amendment of Article 218 ofthe CCP, which had permitted the use of coerced confessions as evidence in certaincircumstances.61The CPA also reaffirmed the right of criminal detainees to remainsilent upon arrest, to consult legal counsel,62and to be promptly informed of the chargesagainst them.63The right to silence and to legal counsel was also affirmed at theinvestigative stage.64Further, “[i]f the accused desires an attorney the examiningmagistrate or investigator shall not question the accused until he or she has retained anattorney or an attorney has been appointed by the Court.”65The bill of rights contained in the TAL guaranteed a number of fundamental principlespertaining to persons deprived of their liberty. It affirmed the principles of equalitybefore the law and the courts and guaranteed the following rights: the right to bearrested on the basis of a judicial warrant; the right to freedom from arbitrary arrest ordetention; the right to a fair trial and public hearing by an independent and impartialtribunal; the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty pursuant to law, toengage independent and counsel, to remain silent with no compulsion to testify, and toto make a statement or provide information about such an offense or to withhold information or to give aparticular opinion in respect of it is punishable by imprisonment or by detention. Torture shall include the use offorce or threats.” As defined under Articles 25 and 26 of the Code, “detention” is a period ranging from threemonths to five years, and “imprisonment” is a period ranging from five to fifteen years.5960

Prior to the amendment, Article 218 of the CCP read: “It is a condition of the acceptance of the confessionthat it is not given as a result of coercion, whether it be physical or moral, a promise or a threat. Nevertheless, ifthere is no causal link between the coercion and the confession or if the confession is corroborated by otherevidence which convinces the court that it is true or which has led to uncovering a certain truth, then the courtmay accept it.” The Article now reads: “It is a condition of the acceptance of the confession that it is not givenas a result of coercion.” (CPA/MEM/27 June 2004/03: Criminal Procedures, Section 3d (vii)). By virtue of thesame Order, Article 213(c) of the CCP was also amended, allowing the court to accept confessions “if it issatisfied with it”, deleting “and if there is no other evidence which proves it to be a lie.” ( Section 3d(vi)).CPA/MEM/27 June 2994/03 (Criminal Procedures). Section 4 reads: “At the time an Iraqi law enforcementofficer arrests any person, the officer shall inform that person of his or her right to remain silent and to consultan attorney.”

Ibid.,Section 5(c), which reads: “A criminal detainee shall be promptly informed, in writing, in a languagewhich they [sic] understand, of the particulars of the charges preferred against them by the authority serving anarrest warrant.”Ibid.,Section 3(b), which reads: “Before questioning the accused the examining magistrate must inform theaccused that i) he or she has the right to remain silent and no adverse inference may be drawn from theaccused’s decision to exercise that right; ii) he or she has the right to be represented by an attorney, and if heor she is not able to afford representation, the Court will provide an attorney at no expense to the accused.”6564

V. Ministry of Interior Agencies and the Iraqi National IntelligenceServiceThis report highlights cases of detainees held in the custody of several key agenciesengaged in the arrest, detention and interrogation of state security and criminal suspects.All of the agencies act under the authority of the minister of interior except one, whichreports directly to the prime minister. Following the U.S.-led war against Iraq in March2003, the CPA authorities dissolved all security and intelligence agencies linked to theSaddam Hussein government.67In the ensuing months, they began the process ofreconstituting the regular police force and other specialized law enforcement agencies,following a process of de-Ba’thification established by the CPA.68Some of theseagencies were initially set up as units within the Ministry of Interior and subsequentlyexpanded into directorates and their powers apparently widened. However, the CPA didnot publicize its creation of these agencies or the extent of their authority andresponsibilities in the Official Gazette, making it difficult to understand who wasresponsible for abuses and where accountability lay.69The Iraqi Interim Governmentset up the newest agencies following the transfer of sovereignty in late June 2004, someof which operate nationwide while others remain confined for the present time toBaghdad and its environs.A number of the detainee cases highlighted in this report involve persons taken intocustody solely because of their alleged affiliation with armed groups or oppositionpolitical parties or for state security reasons that may be connected to their political partyaffiliation. However, the majority are persons suspected of involvement in serious

criminal offenses. Those accused of serious criminal acts, including terrorism andorganized crime, are referred to the Central Criminal Court in Baghdad, and in which thefollowing principal agencies are involved:•The Major Crimes Directorate (Mudiriyyatal-Jara’im al-Kubra):set up in August2003, some four months after the fall of the Saddam Hussein government, bythe CPA in coordination with Iraqi officials represented in the IGC. Initially theagency was established as a Unit (Wihda) within the Ministry of Interior, but wasenlarged into an Office (Maktab) in early March 2004 and subsequently into aDirectorate (Mudiriyya) in July 2004.70The directorate’s work is organized withinfour main offices: the Anti-Terrorism Unit (MaktabMukafahat al-Irhab);theOrganized Crime Unit (Maktabal-Jarima al-Munathama);the Money LaunderingUnit (MaktabGhasil al-Amwal);and the Abduction and Murder Unit (Maktabal-Khatf wal-Qutul).Initially, the Major Crimes Directorate was based in the al-‘Amiriyya district ofthe al-Karkh sector (western Baghdad), in the premises of the former CrimeCombat Office (MaktabMukafahat al-‘Ijram)that existed under the former Iraqigovernment. After July 2004, the directorate was expanded further to acquire abranch in the al-Rusafa sector (eastern Baghdad), which at this writing wasoperating from the Ministry of Interior (located in the Mal’ab al-Sha’ab district)pending a move to other premises.71In addition to these two branches, inSeptember 2004 the Major Crimes Directorate acquired new headquarters – thepremises of the notorious former General Intelligence Directorate (Mudiriyyatal-Mukhabarat al-‘Amma).The building, known locally asHakimiyyat al-Mukhabarat,is located in the al-Karrada district of Baghdad.72The Major Crimes Directorateis headed by Major General Hamid Faraj Daye’ al-Samarra’i; the al-Karkhbranch by Brigadier General Ra’ad Yas Khudayyir al-Dulaimi; and the al-Rusafabranch by Brigadier General Shallal Ibrahim Mahmoud al-Jibburi.Currently the Major Crimes Directorate covers only the Baghdad area and itsimmediate vicinity, including areas deemed to be centers for organized crime as

well as for extremist religious groups involved in attacks against governmenttargets – areas such as al-Mahmudiyya, al-Latifiyya and al-Hussainiyya. Theprime responsibility for the directorate’s branch in al-Karkh remains theinvestigation of organized crime, money laundering, terrorism and abduction,while that of the al-Rusafa branch reportedly focuses on criminal activityconnected with the Shi’a neighborhood of al-Sadr City (Madinatal-Sadr).73Thedirectorate’s personnel hold and interrogate suspects in detention facilities inboth al-Karkh and al-Rusafa (the latter within the Ministry of Interior building).Human Rights Watch is not aware of what detention facilities currently exist atthe Directorate’s recently established headquarters in al-Karrada.•Criminal Intelligence Directorate (MudiriyyatIstikhbarat al-Shurta al-Jina’iyya):setup around April 2004 under CPA authority, the Directorate operates nationwide,and its headquarters are located at the Ministry of Interior. It is headed byMajor General Hussein ‘Ali Kamal. As its name suggests, the CriminalIntelligence Directorate originally was intended as the agency with primeresponsibility for the gathering of intelligence on certain criminal activity, but itis unclear what its official responsibilities are, what type of criminal activity fallswithin its jurisdiction, and what the limits to its powers are. In practice, itspersonnel carry out arrests of suspected criminals, detain and interrogate themand then refer them directly to the Central Criminal Court without goingthrough any other agency. Based on the cases of detainees referred by thisagency to the court and followed up by Human Rights Watch, there appears tobe significant overlap between its activities and those of the Major CrimesDirectorate. This was most apparent after the transfer of sovereignty to theIraqi Interim Government in June 2004, when the Criminal IntelligenceDirectorate played a prominent role in the mass arrests of persons alleged to beinvolved in organized crime carried out in the al-Bataween and al-Kifah Streetareas of Baghdad in late June and early July 2004 (see Section VII). Itspersonnel held those arrested in these raids and in other unrelated arrests for atime at a detention facility under the jurisdiction of the Criminal IntelligenceDirectorate, located in the Ministry of Interior compound, as well as in the mainministry building.Directorate of Ministry Security and Welfare (MudiriyyatAmn wa-Salamat al-Wazara):set up in July 2004 shortly after the introduction of emergency

legislation.74To Human Rights Watch’s knowledge, the Iraqi InterimGovernment originally set this agency up as the Ministry Security Unit (Shu’batAmn al-Wazara)and apparently expanded it subsequently into a directorate. Itwas among the newest agencies the Iraqi Interim Government established afterthe transfer of sovereignty. Its role is said to be the safeguarding of premisesand staff within the Ministry’s compound, but its personnel carry out arrests,detention and interrogation of suspects apprehended on unrelated charges,holding them in their custody within the Interior Ministry’s compound.75•Internal Affairs Directorate (Mudiriyyatal-Shu’un al-Dakhiliyya):set up in August2003 under CPA authority and covering the al-Rusafa and al-Karkh sectors ofBaghdad, its headquarters are located at the Ministry of Interior. It is headed byColonel Muhannad Husam al-Din. Officially, the prime responsibility of thisdirectorate lies in the monitoring and investigation of offenses committed bypolice personnel, such as bribery and corruption, treatment of detainees andabuse of authority. However, as is the case with some of the other agencies, it isunclear what the limits to its powers are. Its personnel reportedly carry outinvestigations and interrogation of suspects, referring them to the CentralCriminal Court where it maintains a permanent office. Some of these casesapparently are unrelated to offenses carried out by police personnel, and involveordinary civilians accused of crimes such as forgery and armed robbery. TheInternal Affairs Directorate holds detainees in its custody at the Ministry ofInterior, but its principal detention facility is said to be located at the al-Qanatpolice station in al-Sadr City, a section of which falls under its jurisdiction.

These are said to include the Important Crimes Directorate (Mudiriyyatal-Jara’im al-Muhimma),set up by theIraqi Interim Government after July 2004 and headed by Major General Tareq al-Baldawi. It is headquartered atthe Ministry of Interior and initially had two branches, one located in the al-Mansour district (al-Karkh sector)and the other in al-Karrada (al-Rusafa sector), but the latter is said to be no longer functioning. It is unclearwhat types of crimes fall within this directorate’s jurisdiction, but the cases it has referred to the Central CriminalCourt reportedly include persons accused of car theft. Occasionally, the Minister of Interior’s Office is said torefer directly individual cases to this Court, including a case involving an abduction, but Human Rights Watchwas not able to independently verify this.

of the above-mentioned agencies are based at the Ministry of Interior compound, usingeither separate detention facilities within the compound or the main Ministry building.77Outside of the framework of the Ministry of Interior, the principal agency currentlyinvolved in the arrest, detention and interrogation of suspects is the Iraqi NationalIntelligence Service (INIS) (Jihazal-Mukhabarat al-Watani al-‘Iraqi).The CPA created theINIS in April 2004; Major General Muhammad ‘Abdullah al-Shahwani currently headsit.78CPA Order 69 provided that the Director General of the INIS would reportdirectly to the then CPA administrator, Paul Bremer, and to the head of governmentupon transfer of sovereignty.79Although Article 12 of this order stipulates that the INIS“shall have no power to arrest or detain persons,” and limits its authority to intelligencegathering on “serious violation of Iraqi criminal law” (including matters relating tointernal state security), it has held scores of detainees in its custody without formalcharges, having arrested them in the first place without judicial warrant.80Human RightsWatch interviewed several detainees held in INIS custody following their release inOctober 2004 (see Section VI). They had been held at the Major Crimes Directorate inal-‘Amiriyya (al-Karkh branch), separately from other detainees who were held thereunder that directorate’s jurisdiction. To Human Rights Watch’s knowledge, the IraqiInterim Government has made no amendments to CPA Order 69 to expand the powersof this agency.

VI. Torture and ill-treatment of members of political and armedgroupsOver the course of several months beginning in July 2004, Human Rights Watchreceived numerous reports of the torture and ill-treatment of persons apprehendedbecause they were suspected members or supporters of Shi’a cleric Muqtada al-Sadr orarmed militiamen belonging to the Mahdi Army. Most of the arrests took place in thecontext of armed clashes that erupted in the city of al-Najaf at the beginning of Augustbetween Iraqi government and Multinational Force troops on the one hand, and armedmilitiamen loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr on the other. Under international humanitarian law,77

persons taking up arms against government forces can be prosecuted under the state’scriminal law. This is different from an international armed conflict betweengovernments, where captured members of the enemy armed forces may be detained asprisoners of war, but may not be prosecuted for taking up arms.Hundreds of people were said to have been arrested in the city, both during the clashesand following the declared cessation of hostilities at the end of August 2004, whenMuqtada al-Sadr and the Iraqi Interim Government reached a political settlement.During the same period, arrests of other suspected members or sympathizers also tookplace in Baghdad, some of whom said they were accused of aiding Shi’a militiamen in al-Najaf. It was unclear in many cases which forces carried out the arrests. Those detainedduring the clashes reported that several forces were involved, including police forces(both uniformed and in civilian clothes), Emergency Response Units of the Ministry ofDefense, Iraqi National Guard, as well as U.S. Marines. The police held at least scoresof those detained at various locations in al-Najaf, from where the allegations of tortureand ill-treatment emanated. Those detained in Baghdad reported that the police arrestedthem and then held them in the custody of one of the Ministry of Interior’s specializedagencies.Human Rights Watch interviewed ten people arrested in this context following theirrelease in August and September 2004. Those arrested in al-Najaf included bothresidents of the city as well as others from Baghdad who were in al-Najaf during thearmed clashes. In four of these cases, Human Rights Watch conducted interviews withthe detainees within a few days of their release, when injuries allegedly sustained undertorture were still clearly visible on the victims. Police forces in al-Najaf had released allof them without referring them to court or charging them with a cognizable offense. Infive other separate cases where police carried out the arrests in Baghdad before theoutbreak of the fighting in al-Najaf, the Interior Ministry’s Major Crimes Directorateheld the detainees and subsequently referred them to the Central Criminal Court, whereHuman Rights Watch was able to speak to them. All of the interviewees who wereresidents of Baghdad were from the Shi’a district of al-Sadr City.Among the detainees referred to the Central Criminal Court was a group of five menarrested together in July 2004 in the al-Karrada district of Baghdad. They told HumanRights Watch that the police picked them up after shooting broke out in the vicinity. Allwere from the al-Sadr City district of Baghdad. One of them, 24-year-old MurtadhaMahdi, said:

It happened on July 11, between midnight and one o’clock in themorning. The police rounded us up and took us to [Criminal]Intelligence headquarters. They took us upstairs and put us in a smallcell that had no air conditioning. There were other detainees there,altogether fifteen or seventeen people. We stayed there eight days.They blindfolded us during interrogation, and accused us of havingblown up a shop that sells alcohol. They said we belonged to the MahdiArmy. I was beaten with cables. They threw water over my face andthen attached electric wires to my ears. Then we were taken to theMajor Crimes [Directorate], where we were interrogated again.81One of the others in the same group, 21-year-old ‘Ali Rashid ‘Abbadi, said the policefirst took them to al-‘Alwiyya police station, where they kept them for one hour or sobefore taking them to the Criminal Intelligence Directorate:The police came and started hitting us. They shouted at us to confess tobeing members of the Mahdi Army. The owner of the alcohol shop hadtold them that he didn’t know us, but they arrested us anyway. First ofall they took us to al-‘Alwiyya police station, where we stayed for anhour or less. From there we went to Intelligence. We were blindfoldedand our hands were tied behind our backs. They put us in a small roomwhere there were other detainees, altogether seventeen people. Thenthey took us one by one for interrogation. They made me sit on thefloor. When I tried to speak, they said “Are you here to talk? Shut up,you are a terrorist. Just confess to being one of the Mahdi Army.”Then they poured cold water over me and applied electric shocks to mygenitals. I was also beaten by several people with cables on my arms andback. Sometimes they would come in with sacks over their heads sothat I wouldn’t be able to identify them. During the eight days westayed there, I was taken twice to Ibn al-Nafis Hospital for HeartDiseases, close to al-Andalus Square. I have an artificial heart valve andhave had a catheterization operation, and they did not let me have anymedication. As a result of the beatings, my blood pressure went up andI had difficulty breathing, so they took me to the hospital for emergencytreatment. Then we were transferred to the Major Crimes Directorate.We were interrogated again but not tortured. There was a secretinformant who told them we were not the ones involved in the crime.828182

Two of the other defendants in the same group gave Human Rights Watch similaraccounts of their treatment. Both said interrogators had kicked and beaten them withcables and subjected them to electric shocks, one of them to his genitals and the other tohis spine.83Having spent twenty-three days in detention before being referred to court,they said very few traces of the torture remained. One showed Human Rights Watchscarring to the left side of his forehead, which he said was the result of being hit withmetal handcuffs, and another displayed a series of long scars to the inside of his left armapparently caused by beatings with cables. Both injuries appeared recent.Following the interviews, Human Rights Watch attended the hearings of all fivedetainees before the investigative judge, who ordered them released for lack of evidence.Two of them stated that they had been forced to sign “confessions” under torture.During their period of detention, their families remained ignorant of their whereaboutsand they had no means of contacting a lawyer. The defendants told Human RightsWatch that they had engaged a lawyer who happened to visit the Major CrimesDirectorate on behalf of another detainee, but he did not turn up in court on August 3,the day they were due to appear before the investigative judge. They were representedby court-appointed lawyers.Widespread arrests of persons suspected of belonging to the Mahdi Army, or of beingsupporters of Muqtada al-Sadr, accompanied the fighting in al-Najaf. At a pressconference on August 12, Prime Minister ‘Allawi announced that Iraqi and U.S. forces inal-Najaf had “captured about 1,200 individuals.”84Residents of al-Najaf and Iraqis fromal-Sadr City district of Baghdad who were in al-Najaf in early August spoke of randomarrests at checkpoints in the city. They told Human Rights Watch that the arrestingforces targeted residents of towns and cities where clashes with Iraqi or U.S. forces hadtaken place, including al-Nasiriyya, al-‘Amara, Basra, al-Kut and al-Sadr City.In the second week of August 2004, Human Rights Watch interviewed four Shi’a menfrom al-Sadr City who said that the police had tortured them six days earlier in al-Najaf.They were stopped on August 6 at a checkpoint located on Hay al-Naft, opposite theWadi al-Salam cemetery, the site of fighting at the time. All four said they came to al-Najaf to pray for relatives buried there and for a funeral ceremony. They were taken tothe nearby headquarters of the Emergency Response Units (Afwajal-Tadakhul al-Sari’),

also located on Hay al-Naft. They said the forces they saw there comprised Iraqi police,Iraqi National Guard, Emergency Response Units, and U.S. Marines.The four men all displayed clear traces of recent external trauma to their bodiesconsistent with the accounts they had given Human Rights Watch, including deep purpleand blue bruising and lacerations to the limbs, stomach, posterior, and face. One ofthem, ‘Ali [full name withheld], the 29-year-old driver of the vehicle stopped at thecheckpoint, told Human Rights Watch:When we entered the headquarters, the [Iraqi] officer told us to kneelbefore him. We were hit on the back of our necks with a rifle butt.Then they took us upstairs to the first floor and told us to face the walland began beating us severely. The Americans were there, standingsome five or six meters away. They just stood and watched. I wasbeaten with a wooden stick on my forehead, and all of us were beaten allover the body with cables and hosepipes. That happened even beforeinterrogation had begun.Then they put us in a cell measuring three by four meters. Altogetherwe were sixty-three in that room, all crammed together. Some of theothers in the cell had also been tortured. One of them, a farmer fromal-Najaf called Khalid, had had his fingernails extracted and one of hisarms broken. Most were adults but there were also several children,between fifteen and seventeen [years old]. We were given no food forthe first day and a half. The guards told us if we wanted to eat we wouldhave to buy our own food.I was interrogated three times. Each time I told them I had nothing todo with the Mahdi Army, that I was a member ofal-Da’wa al-Islamiyya[Islamic Call] and even showed them my party ID card. They paid noattention to that. The only special treatment I got was that they did notblindfold me or tie my hands during interrogation. We were beatenduring interrogation, which was mainly to force us to insult Muqtada al-Sadr and our holy places. We were released four days later.The three others interviewed by Human Rights Watch, who also said they had noassociation with the Mahdi Army, described similar treatment, adding that the police had

blindfolded them during interrogation. They also said that under torture, they wereforced to insult Muqtada al-Sadr and the Shi’a faith.85In another case, police and Iraqi National Guard forces arrested three men who saidthey were trying to deliver humanitarian aid supplies to the civilian population in al-Najaf and accused them of being Mahdi Army supporters. Dhia’ Fawzi Shahid, agedthirty from Baghdad, told Human Rights Watch he and two other colleagues werevolunteers who were delivering supplies on behalf of the Ministry of Trade when theywere arrested in early August:There were three of us, traveling in an ordinary car. As we approached acheckpoint, the police and army fired in the air and motioned us to stop.When I got out of the car they blindfolded me and tied my handsbehind my back. At al-Najaf Police Directorate, they removed theblindfolds and I could see four electric wires and various implementsused for beatings in the room. During interrogation, we were accusedof belonging to the al-Sadr group. Personally, I was beaten with cablesand suspended by my hands, which were tied behind my back. One ofmy shoulders was dislocated as a result. But I saw young men held therewho were lying on the floor while the police were treading on theirheads with their boots. It was worse than Saddam’s regime. The policein al-Najaf extort money from the people because they regard them asthe spoils of war.They told me the charge against me was weapons smuggling, but thatthey would release me if I paid them six papers.86They said I shouldcontact my family to arrange for the payment, which I refused. I wasdetained for thirteen days. In the hall where I was held, there were over300 of us, including elderly men and juveniles. We had to pay for ourown food, although every three or four days the Ministry of Healthdistributed packets of biscuits.87Further arrests of persons suspected of having taken part in the clashes in al-Najafcontinued after the announcement of an agreement to end the fighting between Iraqi85

government forces and those loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr. Police and Iraqi National Guardforces reportedly arrested scores of men and youth, including children, following raidson their homes, apparently on the basis of tip-offs or intelligence provided by secretinformants. They arrested others in the street, apparently because they thought themsuspicious. Some of those detained were held at al-Najaf Police Directorate and othersat the Crime Combat Office, located opposite al-Najaf Tourist Hotel on the al-KufaRoad in the city.Other former detainees held in police custody in al-Najaf during August 2004 toldHuman Rights Watch that they were unaware of the reasons for their arrest, butassumed that like in many other cases, the police targeted them because they suspectedthem of having links with the Mahdi Army. Some also said that they believed they werefalsely accused of having such links, but that the real motive for their arrest wasextortion. Two such former detainees, who spoke to Human Rights Watch oncondition of anonymity, were held in the first half of August. One of them said thepolice arrested him and held him for several hours at a police station in the city88andthat during interrogation they accused him of being a member of the Mahdi Army. Hestated that they released him after he agreed under duress to make a payment of 250,000Iraqi dinars. He was told that 50,000 dinars was for his arresting officer and theremainder for the police chief. He added that initially they had demanded 750,000dinars, but that they brought the price down through a process of negotiation. In thecell where they held him, he estimated that there were some ninety other detainees,many of them arrested ostensibly for their alleged links to the Mahdi Army.89The second case of arrest for extortion was that of a businessman aged forty, who toldHuman Rights Watch that the police held him for ten days at the Crime Combat Officeon the main al-Kufa Road in al-Najaf. He said that both uniformed and plainclothespolicemen raided his home at six o’clock in the morning while he and his family wereasleep:They went up to the roof, where I was sleeping with my wife andchildren because of the heat, and fired shots in the air. They were veryrough with us, and didn’t give my wife the chance to wear her‘abaya[traditional black cloak worn by women]. One of the officers hit me andtook me downstairs and began searching the house. I asked what theywere looking for, but I got no response. I asked to see an arrest warrant8889

and was told there was one, but they didn’t show it to me. As I wasgetting into their car, one of them hit me with the butt of his rifle.As soon as I entered the Crime Combat Office, they blindfolded me andbound my hands very tightly with a piece of cloth. Then God’s mercydescended on me. They began hitting me in the captain’s room. Therewas more than one of them. They didn’t ask me any questions, but keptbeating me for about ten minutes. I was especially hit on my back withwhat I thought were rifle butts, and they were insulting me and swearingall the while. I fell to the ground, so they took me and put me inanother room for about two hours, keeping me blindfolded andhandcuffed. Then they took me to the torture room where I was beatenagain with cables andfalaqa[beating on the soles of the feet]. I couldn’ttell from which direction the blows would come. I could tell from theirvoices that there were four or five of them.After about eight days they began negotiating with me over the price formy release. Of course here everything is with money. If you want to getword to your family, you have to pay. If you want to eat, you have topay. I was told that the captain was asking for one million dinars for myrelease. I said that was a lot of money, and they said, “You can afford it:you have a house, a car and a good business.” We finally settled for350,000 dinars, and they released me. The following day, a policemanwas sent to pick up the money, and he told me they were keeping an eyeon me.The businessman also recounted to Human Rights Watch what he had seen in the cellwhere he had been held:There were over seventy people in the cell. It was so crowded that therewas no room to lie down. About a third of the detainees were MahdiArmy people, so I was told. They were kept to one side. The torturethat I suffered was nothing compared to theirs. Some of them had hadtheir fingernails extracted. I saw electric wires in the cell, and a ceilingfan from which wires were dangling. One of them told me they had tiedhis feet together and suspended him upside down from the ceiling. Isaw that his body was covered with blue bruises from the severity of thebeating. Each day the guards would come and take out ten or fifteen ofthem, and they never brought them back. I don’t know where they were

taken. The asking price for their release was enormous, going up to amillion and a half dinars. This is much worse than in Saddam’s days.Then, it was only the security forces doing it, but now it is also thepolice. Two others I spoke to said they had come from Baghdad tolook for their brother, but were arrested and accused of bringing moneyfor the Mahdi Army with them. There was supposed to be an amnestyfor Mahdi Army members, but they didn’t release anyone from here.90On August 16, 2004, representatives of political parties and their supporters held ademonstration in the city of al-Kut in the governorate of al-Waset to protest the ongoingfighting in the nearby city of al-Najaf. Spokespersons for the demonstrators described itas a peaceful event, triggered by the reported killing of scores of people, includingwomen and children, as a result of aerial bombardment by U.S. forces of the al-Sharqiyya district of al-Kut, as the fighting in al-Najaf spread to nearby areas.91Thedemonstrators gathered outside al-Waset governorate building to present a list ofdemands to the governor, which included the payment of compensation to the familiesof those killed. One of the representatives of the demonstrators’ committee was Shaikh‘Ammar ‘Ata al-Hamdani, preacher at the Abi Turab mosque and a member of theIslamic Da’wa Party (Hizbal-Da’wa al-Islamiyya).He told Human Rights Watch that thecommittee failed to meet with the governor, but that the demonstrators agreed to returnthe following day in order to receive a response to their demands. However, the policeinstead arrested him in the early hours of August 17 and tortured him:At about three o’clock in the morning our home was raided. There wasloud banging on the front door and two people entered. They woreNational Guard uniforms. Others, some of them masked, surroundedthe house. I asked them to show me an arrest warrant, to which theyresponded by pointing a rifle at my wife and a gun at me. They said,“You are coming with us,” while I kept saying I had not committed acrime. I got into their car and they took me to the headquarters of al-Waset police force. As soon as I entered the building, they startedbeating me. I couldn’t see because they had put a sack over my head,and my hands were bound with metal handcuffs. They tortured me

without even asking me my name or any other question. I received ablow to my throat and was hit hard with cables on my head, whichstarted bleeding. The torture lasted about forty-five minutes, with aboutfour or five people beating me. They asked me no questions and didnot talk to each other, so I do not know their names. It appears thatthey have learned that lesson. I was kicked and dragged on the floor,and beaten severely on my back and stomach. Then they threw me in acell and removed the sack from my head. The cell had about seventy-five people in it. Two of them appeared to be juveniles. I stayed thereuntil about noon the next day, when I was taken to see the deputy policechief. He asked me why I was here, and I replied that I did not know.They brought me breakfast, and an hour later I was released.92Shaikh ‘Ammar al-Hamdani told Human Rights Watch that upon his release he went toal-Zahra’ Hospital in al-Waset for a medical examination and obtained a medical reportattesting to his condition. Human Rights Watch did not have the opportunity toexamine the medical report, but was given photographs of Shaikh ‘Ammar’s injuriestaken on the same day. They showed deep purple and red bruising and lacerationsacross his back, shoulders and upper arms, consistent with being whipped or lashed withcables or other implements. He showed Human Rights Watch scarring around hiswrists, which he said the metal handcuffs caused. He said he believed the police releasedhim quickly with his wounds still fresh and visible as a way of sending a message toothers to desist from any activity frowned upon by the authorities. The norm, he added,was to keep detainees in custody until all traces of torture or ill-treatment haddisappeared, and that he was aware of over twenty recent cases of this kind. Followinghis release, he submitted an official complaint against the police chief, his deputy, andthe governor of al-Waset at a local court about his arrest without judicial warrant and histreatment in detention, but at this writing Human Rights Watch did not know what theoutcome was.Human Rights Watch is also aware of other cases involving the arrest without warrant,illegal detention and ill-treatment of members of several political parties in Baghdad.Such arrests violate the right to due process under international human rights law, butalso infringe upon the rights to freedom of association and expression. In all of thesecases, the detaining authority was the Iraqi National Intelligence Service (INIS), whichreports directly to Prime Minister ‘Allawi and which by law possesses no arresting ordetaining powers (see Section V). However, in at least one case, the INIS and personnelof the Interior Ministry’s Major Crimes Directorate jointly carried out the arrests, with92

the INIS taking the lead. The INIS also uses the Major Crimes Directorate’s detentionfacility in al-‘Amiriyya to hold detainees in its custody, though they are held separatelyfrom other detainees there.Human Rights Watch received credible information, which it did not have theopportunity to independently verify, that the INIS held some ninety-six detainees at theal-‘Amiriyya facility as of mid-October 2004. They were said to include people linked totwo Shi’a political parties, the Islamic Da’wa Party, and the Supreme Council for theIslamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) (al-Majlisal-A’la lil-Thawra al-Islamiyya fil-‘Iraq).Human Rights Watch was not aware of the reasons for the arrests, but some of the caseswere reportedly linked to attempts by the INIS to claim property said to have belongedto the former Iraqi intelligence service and occupied since the 2003 war by these twopolitical parties. Guards employed by these parties at these premises were said to havebeen arrested as part of that process and held in INIS custody with no legal basis. All ofthe arrests were said to have been carried out without warrants from a judicial authority.The INIS held the detainees incommunicado, without access to family members or legalcounsel, and detained them for between three to four weeks without referral to court.The ninety-six detainees were also said to include three journalists working for a localnewspaper,al-Shira’[The Sail]. The reasons for their arrest were equally unclear, but mayhave been connected with the publication inal-Shira’of an article on the INIS, detailingthe alleged connections of some of its personnel with the former intelligence services ofthe Saddam Hussein government.93Following the publication of this article, thenewspaper editor-in-chief, Sattar Ghanem, was reportedly arrested. Human RightsWatch did not know whether he was among the threeal-Shira’journalists held by theINIS at the al-‘Amiriyya facility, and at this writing, could not confirm whether any ofthe ninety-six detainees continued to be held or released.The most widely publicized arrests took place on August 16, 2004, when the INIS,together with personnel of the Major Crimes Directorate, raided the headquarters of theHizbullahMovement in Iraq. Soon after the fall of the Hussein government,Hizbullahhad occupied the headquarters of the former General Intelligence Service, a buildingknown locally asHakimiyyat al-Mukhabarat,located in the al-‘Alwiyya district ofBaghdad.94Human Rights Watch received conflicting reports about which other forces

provided backup support to INIS and Interior Ministry personnel during the raid: somesaid that it was soldiers of the Iraqi National Guard, “wearing clothes similar to those ofthe U.S. army,” while others said U.S. forces took part but did not enter the premises.Altogether, fifty-nine people were arrested, among them the Secretary General ofHizbullah,Hassan al-Sari, and tens of party members and employees, as well as sixpeople who happened to be on the premises as guests. Iraqi forces searched thepremises and removed property. They kept those arrested there for twelve hours beforetaking them in two buses to the Major Crimes Directorate facility in al-‘Amiriyya.The arrests sparked an outcry by a number of Iraqi political parties. The pressuregenerated contributed to the release of the party’s leader, Hassan al-Sari, the followingday. He told Human Rights Watch that arresting officials used violence against them atthe time of arrest and ill-treated them, including by handcuffing them and making themlie down on the ground face down for over twelve hours, barring them from talking anddepriving them of food and water. He added that he had lodged an official complaintagainst their illegal arrest and treatment at the Central Criminal Court, where HumanRights Watch spoke to him.95INIS personnel carried out the arrests without judicial warrants and, with the exceptionof Hassan al-Sari, held the detainees for periods ranging from ten days to two monthswithout referral to an investigative judge or formally charging them. In early October2004, Human Rights Watch interviewed five of them following their release. Naji MawlaNi’ma, one of Hassan al-Sari’s personal bodyguards, described the raid and theirtreatment:It was about 2.30 in the morning, and we were asleep. We wereawakened by the sounds of gunshots and ran to see what washappening. One of the guards told us that there were American forcesoutside, together with other groups wearing National Guard uniforms,many of whom wore hoods. Al-Haj Hassan al-Sari asked them whatwas happening and did they represent the government, and they replied“Yes, we are from the government.” But they had no official paperswith them. They simply raided the Movement’s headquarters, and thenordered us to lie down on the ground. There were twenty of us at first,including Hojatoleslam al-Sayyid Hashem al-Shawki, a member of theSupreme Council of the Islamic Revolution. They pulled his‘amama[turban] off his head and it fell to the ground. Then they proceeded toHuman Rights Watch discussion with Hassan al-Sari, Secretary General ofHizbullah,Baghdad, August 25,2004.95

tie his hands behind his back with hisjubba[cloak worn by Muslimclerics] and ordered him to lie down on the ground too. When everyonewas lying face down, they placed metal handcuffs on our wrists. Theyalso used al-Sayyid Hashem al-Shawki’sjubba,which they tore into strips,to tie the hands of others, and also used the strips and other cloth toblindfold us. We stayed in that position from about 2.30 in the morninguntil 3.00 in the afternoon. They gave us no food or water. They didnot question us, and we were not allowed to talk to each other. Ifanyone tried to speak or ask a question, they would come and kick us inthe back and swear at us.96At the Major Crimes Directorate, INIS personnel held the detainees in a room that Najisaid measured five by six square meters, causing severe overcrowding: “We would taketurns to sleep since there was no space for all of us to sleep at the same time, and eventhen we had to sleep in a crouched position as there was no room to lie down on ourback.”97Another of those detained described the condition of their detention:In the cell there was one split unit [air conditioning] and a ceiling fan.The weather was extremely hot. They cut off the electricity supply fromeleven o’clock at night until three o’clock in the afternoon of thefollowing day. Three among us fainted from the extreme heat. Theygave us no food or water on the first day, and said that we would haveto pay for food, water, and cigarettes at double the usual price. They didnot allow us to contact our families or to engage a lawyer. We could noteven ask our families to bring us something to sleep on, and had to sleepon the bare floor.98According to the accounts of those interviewed by Human Rights Watch, the INISinitially interrogated the detainees, focusing their questions onHizbullah’salleged linkswith Iran:During interrogation, they accused us of serving Iranian interests and ofbeing agents of the Iranian government. Then they said we were aterrorist organization. They also claimed to have concrete informationproving that we had bought weapons and explosives. None of us was969798

tortured during interrogation, but they waged a war of nerves against us,sometimes telling us they would release us, and at other times that theywould transfer us to the custody of the Major Crimes Directorate toprolong our detention.99Once initial interrogation had ended, personnel of the Major Crimes Directorate’s Anti-Terrorism Unit then apparently interrogated the detainees. Neither agency brought anyof them before an investigative judge or filed formal charges against them. They thenreleased them in stages: ten were released on August 26, thirty-nine others on September20, and the remaining four on October 13. The Major Crimes Directorate subsequentlytook over the premises atHakimiyyat al-Mukhabarat,from whichHizbullahwas evicted, asits main headquarters. On the basis of the formal complaint lodged on August 25, 2004,byHizbullah’sleader, Hassan al-Sari, the Central Criminal Court’s chief investigativejudge at the time, Zuhair al-Maliki, issued a series of summons requiring several officialsto appear in court to answer questions relating to the arrests. Brigadier General Ra’adYas Khudayyir al-Dulaimi, head of the al-‘Amiriyya facility, sent a representative inresponse to the summons he received. The representative reportedly stated that theINIS held theHizbullahdetainees at the Major Crimes Directorate facility of al-‘Amiriyyaunder its jurisdiction. The Ministry of Interior’s legal spokesperson, the Minister ofInterior Falah al-Naqib, and the INIS director, Major General Muhammad ‘Abdullah al-Shahwani, did not answer summons issued to them. On October 18, 2004, JudgeZuhair al-Maliki was removed from his post as the Central Criminal Court’s chiefinvestigative judge and transferred to another post.

VII. Arbitrary Arrest, torture and ill-treatment of criminal suspectsAt the Central Criminal Court, Human Rights Watch spoke to fifty-four detainees whopolice officials had accused of a variety of serious crimes, including murder, abductionand kidnapping, money laundering, drug trafficking, weapon smuggling, and acts ofterrorism. The vast majority were in court for the first time to have their statementstaken down by a judicial investigator and have their first investigative hearing, havingalready been detained for several weeks, well beyond what is permissible under Iraqi law.Only in a handful of cases had they reached the trial stage. Human Rights Watchobserved numerous investigative hearings and several trials in connection with suchcases.10099

At least twenty detainees seen by Human Rights Watch in the Major Crimes Room wereblindfolded, and remained so until police led them before the investigative judge’s door,and removed the blindfolds. Police officials assigned to the court told Human RightsWatch that this was to prevent suspected members of criminal gangs from identifyingthe officers responsible for their arrest and to protect them from retaliatory attacks inthe future. In two such cases, the detainees were allowed to remove the blindfolds priorto being interviewed by Human Rights Watch, provided they remained facing the wall.They said that the police had blindfolded them continuously since their arrest severaldays earlier.The majority of the detainees to whom Human Rights Watch spoke said that torture andill-treatment under interrogation was routine. Some also said that the police also usedviolence against them at the time of arrest. The accounts of their treatment at the handsof the police were consistent to a high degree. Typically, detainees reported beingblindfolded with their hands tied behind their back while undergoing interrogation.101They said their interrogators or guards kicked, slapped and punched them, and beatthem all over the body using hosepipes, wooden sticks, iron rods, and cables. Some ofthem bore visible traces of external trauma to the head, neck, arms, legs, and back whenexamined by Human Rights Watch. These traces appeared consistent with their accountsof having been repeatedly beaten. Several bore fresh bruises and lacerations, whileothers had scarring that appeared recent. In some cases, detainees also reported thattheir interrogators had subjected them to electric shocks, most commonly by havingelectric wires attached to their ears or genitals.One detainee who was tried on an abduction charge and acquitted showed HumanRights Watch his dislocated shoulder, consistent with his account of interrogatorssuspending him for prolonged periods from a door handle by his hands, which they tied

defendants in holding cells and then brought them up to what was known as the ‘Major Crimes Room,’ wherethey awaited their turn before the judge. Having obtained authorization from judicial officials to speak to thedetainees, Human Rights Watch also had the full cooperation of police officials permanently assigned to thecourt to coordinate logistics for the hearings. They gave Human Rights Watch free access to all detainees, butthere was no opportunity to talk confidentially to them. The detainees usually sat on the floor facing the walland were told not to talk to anyone or to each other. Through early September 2004, most of the interviews ordiscussions with the detainees conducted by Human Rights Watch took place in the Major Crimes Room, withinsight of police officials who had escorted them from their places of detention, but in most cases out of earshot.The president of the Central Criminal Court changed the system on September 7, ordering that all detainees bekept in the holding cells until the judges or judicial investigators were ready to receive them, and closing downthe Major Crimes Room. Thereafter, Human Rights Watch conducted its interviews at the holding cells, whichafforded more opportunity for confidential discussions with the detainees, without the presence of any detainingofficials.In some cases, detainees gave Human Rights Watch the first names and ranks of police officials who theyalleged had tortured them or ordered their torture under interrogation.101

together behind his back.102Another detainee, one of five people brought to court on amurder charge, appeared unable to walk unassisted. Two of his co-defendants broughthim to the door of the holding cell at the Central Criminal Court, where Human RightsWatch spoke to him. He said he had sustained a strong blow to the head while beingheld at al-Bayya’ police station following his arrest on August 13, 2003, affecting hiscentral nervous system. He had lost partial use of his legs, and his speech was partiallyimpaired. He said detaining officials took him to the Neurosurgical Center Hospital inthe Bab al-Shaikh district of Baghdad on one occasion. He also showed Human RightsWatch a broken front tooth, which he said had resulted from a punch in the face.103Human Rights Watch interviewed two of three detainees brought to the CentralCriminal Court by personnel of the Directorate of Ministry Security and Welfare. Allthree appeared to be in poor physical condition. One of them, aged twenty-five, wore awhitedishdasha[traditional long robe] soiled in a number of places with large red stainsthat appeared to be blood. His right eye had dark bruising around it, and there werecontusions on his forehead. Also visible was a wound to the left side of his head, fromwhich blood had flowed down the side and into his ear, and looked very recently dried.He told Human Rights Watch that the police had arrested him and the other twodetainees the previous evening, August 17, in the vicinity of the Interior Ministry in theal-Sha’ab district, beaten him badly and brought him to court the following day.104Hewas unaware of any charges against him.105Human Rights Watch sought to attend hisinvestigative hearing, but upon checking with the judges in court, none was aware of hiscase and said the case had not been assigned to them. Human Rights Watchsubsequently tried to obtain further information on the defendant through Ministry ofInterior officials assigned to the court, but none was provided and the organization wasunable to establish what happened to him.Human Rights Watch also was informed about, but did not interview, a detainee referredto the Central Criminal Court in the second week of October 2004. According to one ofthe court’s investigative judges, the detainee was brought in a wheelchair, havingHuman Rights Watch interview with Haidar Ahmad Mirza Ahmad al-Nu’aimi, Central Criminal Court,Baghdad, July 31, 2004.Human Rights Watch interview with Ra’ed ‘Abdul-Salam Hamid, Central Criminal Court, Baghdad,September 11, 2004. Hamid said he also had spent some two months at the Major Crimes Directorate, and hasbeen subsequently transferred to the Iraqi Correctional Service section located in Abu Ghraib prison. He andhis four co-defendants told Human Rights Watch that their trial had been postponed four times because of thefailure of the police to bring a sixth defendant charged in the same case. On that day too, only five of them hadbeen brought to court, and the trial was postponed again.104105103102

suffered partial paralysis as a result of torture. Personnel of the Major CrimesDirectorate held him, accusing him of having planted an explosive device at theheadquarters of a political party, although that party’s officials reportedly denied this.During interrogation, the detainee was hit on his spine with a metal pipe, damagingseveral of his vertebrae and causing the paralysis.106The majority of detainees held in the custody of the Criminal Intelligence Directorateand the Major Crimes Directorate spoke of dire conditions of detention wheninterviewed by Human Rights Watch. In particular, they complained of severeovercrowding with no room to lie down to sleep at night. Some detainees said they tookturns sleeping, while others said they sometimes slept while standing, as there wasstanding room only in the cell. Not surprisingly, under such conditions, hygiene wasextremely poor – as attested by the physical appearance of most detainees Human RightsWatch saw in court. Such detainees complained of lack of washing and toilet facilities, aconstant and overpowering stench of urine in the cells, and lack of basic medical care,including for a range of skin afflictions such as lice. Another complaint was lack of foodor water. Most detainees reported that police officials in charge of these detentionfacilities rarely provided food, which detainees had to buy themselves if they happenedto be carrying cash when arrested and if police did not take this money from them uponsearching them. Although the police did not allow any family visits in these facilities,they reportedly allowed family members who were able to find out where the detaineeswere being held to bring food to the facility, which detainees then sometimes sharedwith their cellmates.

Mass arrestsStarting in late June 2004 the Iraqi Interim Government carried out several large-scaleand high-profile raids on districts of Baghdad said to be strongholds of a number oforganized criminal gangs. This report highlights two such raids conducted in late Juneand early July 2004 by Ministry of Interior personnel, with backup provided byMultinational Force personnel (see also Section X). Immediately after the raids, Ministryof Interior officials publicly claimed that they had broken up a number of criminal gangsas a result, and that they had carried out the arrests on the basis of good intelligence andweeks of surveillance of the targeted suspects. They invited selected international, local,and Arab journalists to photograph the detainees and observe them being interrogated,portraying the raid as a successful police operation.107Local newspapers amply covered106107

the raids in the ensuing days, creating the impression that the Iraqi authorities weremaking significant inroads in their fight against organized crime. In both examplesdetailed below, the police released the majority of the suspects within a day or two afterthe raids, though that received little press attention. Human Rights Watch followed theremaining cases through the court system, and found that in many of those, investigativejudges ordered the suspects released because of insufficient evidence once they werebrought before them. The police appear to have arrested a large number of themrandomly during the operations, either because they happened to be in the wrong placeat the wrong time, or on the basis of unverified tip-offs from locals. By the time of therelease of these detainees, the police had held them for weeks or months withoutbringing them to court, and in some cases certainly tortured or otherwise ill-treatedthem.

The al-Bataween arrests, June 27, 2004On June 27, 2004, squads of the Ministry of Interior’s Criminal Intelligence Directoratecarried out widespread arrests in the neighborhood of al-Bataween in Baghdad’s al-Rusafa sector, located near the al-Sa’doun district on the east bank of the Tigris River.The neighborhood is reputed to be frequented by alleged criminal groups involved indrug trafficking, in particular. Iraqi authorities said the raid was aimed at apprehendingsuch gangs. According to official sources, 149 arrests were made, among them onewoman and an unknown number of Arab nationals. Investigative judges at the CentralCriminal Court told Human Rights Watch that the raid was conducted without warrants,apparently on the direct order of the Minister of Interior. The following day, localnewspapers quoted Ministry officials as saying that the police raid broke up fifteencriminal gangs, some of which they said were involved in murder, abduction, robbery,drug trafficking, and prostitution. The arrests, according to Major General Hussain ‘AliKamal, undersecretary for Criminal Intelligence Affairs at the Ministry of Interior, wereconducted on the basis of information obtained through surveillance and the use ofsatellite imagery to monitor the movements of suspected criminal gangs.108He said thatspecially selected forces from other agencies, including the Interior Ministry’s InternalAffairs Directorate and SWAT teams, took part in the raid, with backup provided byU.S. Military Police forces.109Criminal Intelligence personnel initially held the detainees at the Ministry of Interior’scompound, located in the al-Sha’ab district of eastern Baghdad, close to the al-Sha’abfootball stadium. According to accounts received by Human Rights Watch, they108109

tortured and abused them at various stages of their detention, particularly during the firstfew days following their arrest, and deprived them of food and water for at least twodays.On June 29, the third day after the police carried out the arrests, U.S. soldiers from anOregon Army National Guard unit on patrol in the area close to the Ministry ofInterior’s compound witnessed Iraqi police abusing the detainees and made a decision tointervene. It was the only known case in which U.S. forces intervened to stop detaineeabuse following the official transfer of sovereignty from the CPA to the Iraqi InterimGovernment. One of the battalion’s scouts took photographs of the scene through hisrifle scope, showing at least two dozen detainees sitting on the ground, with their handstied behind their back and blindfolded. Several of them were semi-clad, bearing whatappeared to be “fresh welts and bruises” on their backs and legs. One was thought to beaged fourteen (see Section VIII).110The following is an extract from a written account made available to Human RightsWatch by Captain Jarrell Southall, a U.S. soldier serving with the Oregon Army NationalGuard’s 2ndBattalion, 162ndInfantry Regiment, of what he witnessed on that day:111As we entered the compound basically un-challenged I could seeapparent prisoners bound by nylon ropes and rags. The prisoners weremostly all sitting, some writhing in pain as we approached thequestioning or holding area. This holding area was completely outdoorsand there was a desk with an IP [Iraqi Police] sitting by the deskoverlooking this holding area. The prisoners tried to explain that theyhave had very little water and no food for three days. Many of theseprisoners had bruises and cuts and belt or hose marks all over …We passed out water bottles to them and staged the prisoners near theback wall of this compound to relieve them from direct sunlight. At thesame time CPT [Captain] Seth Morgulas, an Armor Officer, who isassigned as a company commander of a MP [Military Police] company,arrived and commenced to disarm and segregate the Iraqi Policemen.According to Captain Southall’s account, his battalion commander, Lt. ColonelHendrickson, then asked to speak to the person in charge. One Iraqi official told him110111

“that there was no prisoner abuse and that everything was under control and they weretrying to conduct about 150 investigations as soon as possible.” Another Iraqi policeofficial “made sure to place blame for any misdoings to those who worked inside thisfacility. Whereas, he was only in charge of the ‘outer security’!”:All the while soldiers were applying aid to those prisoners who seemedthat they would expire and started distributing water to those in needand carting the non-ambulatory patients away by stretcher. I witnessedprisoners who were barely able to walk and many of those wore soiledclothes.Upon searching the premises, U.S. soldiers found some seventy-eight other detainees ina room measuring about 20 x 20 sq. feet. Captain Southall said most were Sudanese,arrested “because they had no identification.” According to his account:When we entered the office space adjacent to the crowded room therewere several men in civilian clothes sitting around a conference roomtable. There was a tightly bound and gagged prisoner crumpled at thefoot of these men sitting around this conference table smokingcigarettes… This room was heavily air-conditioned, which was a starkcontrast to the rooms that contained prisoners. The IPs told me thatthese prisoners were all dangerous criminals and most were thieves,users of marijuana, and other types of bad people. No IPs thereadmitted to beating or abusing the prisoners. However, the abuse andneglect was quite apparent. As we traveled from room to roomprisoners were bound, blinded, and gagged. Many had terrible bruisesand burns. One room contained hoses, broken lamps (electric shock),and chemicals of some variety.112Accounts by other U.S. soldiers who were present at the Ministry of Interior compoundat the time have since been made public. They included that of Staff Sergeant KevinMaries who, according toThe Oregonian:reported that one prisoner lying facedown on the ground was struckrepeatedly on the back with a rubber hose. Later, Marines watchedanother extended beating of a prisoner and took pictures through his112

spotting scope. A uniformed Iraqi policeman and civilian delivered abeating that was “more vicious and prolonged than previouslyobserved,” Maries’ statement said. At one point, the prisoner’s bare feetwere tied to a bar and elevated, and the guards beat his bare feet with arubber hose.113According to press reports based on interviews with several of the U.S. soldiers on thescene, Lieutenant Colonel Dan Hendrickson, the battalion commander, then “radioedup the chain of command in the Army’s 1stCavalry Division, relaying what he had seenand asking for instructions … It wasn’t long before the order came: Stand Down.Return the prisoners to the Iraqi authorities and leave the detention yard.”114It wasunclear whether the order came from the division or elsewhere within the U.S. Army’sCentral Command or that of the Multinational Force (see Section X). Commenting onthe incident some two months later, General Richard Myers, chairman of the U.S. JointChiefs of Staff, was reported as saying “it is critically important to our success in Iraqthat we reinforce, whenever possible, the authority and responsibility of the Iraqigovernment to handle its internal affairs.”115At the time, some of the local newspapersportrayed the incident as an attempt by U.S. forces to secure the release of criminalgangs.116Ministry of Interior officials released an estimated eighty of the detainees within days oftheir arrest. They continued to hold the remaining sixty-nine detainees for at least twomonths without bringing them before an investigative judge, and denied them access tolegal counsel and to family members until their move to the Transfer Prison.117HumanRights Watch saw the relatives of several of the detainees who came to the courtregularly in the hope that the detainees would be brought before a judge, and were

invariably disappointed. On August 23, the wife of one such detainee told HumanRights Watch:They arrested my husband in an overnight car park at around eleveno’clock on the morning of 27 June. Until now, he has not been broughtbefore the judge. About twelve or thirteen days after his arrest, he wastransferred to theTasfirat[Transfer Prison]. At first I didn’t know wherehe had been taken, but then through someone in the police I found outhe was being held by Criminal Intelligence. That was about three orfour days after his arrest. I tried to see him, but they wouldn’t let me.Now I can visit him once a week, on Sundays which are the visiting daysfor women. He told me he had been beaten while held by CriminalIntelligence. One of his fingers was broken, and he had been beaten onhis right leg with an iron rod. They wanted him to confess to one of hisrelatives’ involvement in a crime.118At the beginning of September 2004, one of the employees of the Transfer Prisonresponsible for escorting detainees to the Central Criminal Court told Human RightsWatch that sixty-one detainees from the al-Bataween group were still being held thereand had not been summoned before an investigative judge. By September 15, on thebasis of information provided by several of the judges, Human Rights Watch was able toaccount for forty-one of them: eight were released for lack of evidence, twenty-eightwere released on bail, and in five other cases there was sufficient evidence to authorizetheir continued detention on abduction charges.119In the third week of October 2004,Human Rights Watch interviewed four detainees from the al-Bataween group that werestill being held. They had been brought to court for the first time since their arrestalmost four months earlier, and were facing charges related to possession of drugs.Three of them were brothers originally from the city of al-Kut but were living inBaghdad doing casual labor. One of them, Hassan Ghadhban Tu’ma, aged forty, wasworking in a bakery at the time. He told Human Rights Watch:I was in the bakery, and my brothers were selling fruit outside. A largegroup of police arrived, some of them in civilian clothes, and others inpolice or military uniform. Some of them also wore masks. It wassometime between 11:30 and noon. They took everyone who was in theHuman Rights Watch interview with the wife of one of the al-Bataween detainees [name withheld by HumanRights Watch], Central Criminal Court, Baghdad, August 23, 2004.Human Rights Watch discussions with Zuhair al-Maliki, Salem Radwan al-Musawi and Haqqi Isma’il al-Shummari, investigative judges, Central Criminal Court, September 15, 2004.119118

bakery and those who were working on the street. Altogether theyarrested about 160 people, and took us to the [Criminal] Intelligenceheadquarters. We were blindfolded, and our hands were tied behind ourbacks. They began hitting us right away, and this lasted into the night.During the first three days, there was continuous torture. I was beatenwith an aluminum rod and with cables. They also tortured me withfalaqa.Then I was told to sign a statement with my hands tied behindmy back, so I didn’t even see the paper and I don’t know what I signed.On the third day, the Americans came. They took us out of the cellsand gave us water and treated us for the injuries caused by the torture.They also punished the [Iraqi] officials by disarming them, taking themoutside under the sun and confronting them sharply about theirbehavior towards us.120The eldest of the three brothers, Jaber, aged forty-six, told Human Rights Watch that thepolice forced him to crouch down with his knees and forehead touching the ground andtied his hands behind his back, and that he remained in this position almost continuouslyfor four days.121The youngest, Jassem, aged thirty-two, said that “they gave us no foodor water for three days except for an onion and a tomato, and if it had not been for theintervention of the Americans, we would have been finished.” He added that on thefollowing day, “the Americans returned. We didn’t see them but could see the tops oftheir vehicles through the window of our cell. But they did not intervene again.”122Allthree remained in the custody of Criminal Intelligence for fifteen days before their moveto the Transfer Prison. During that time, their families were unable to gain access tothem. The three brothers confirmed that on the second day, Criminal Intelligencepersonnel had released a large group among them, most of whom were elderly. Theysaw no female detainees among those arrested, but said three of the males were children.At the Transfer Prison, they were able to engage a lawyer, who was in court representingthem on the day Human Rights Watch met them. When asked about other detaineesarrested in the same raid, they said that upon moving them to the Transfer Prison, thepolice divided the al-Bataween group into three groups, denoted by A, B and C. Thethree brothers belonged to group C, but only four of them had come to court that day.The police had already released all of those in group B, they said.

The fourth detainee in this group interviewed by Human Rights Watch that day was aSudanese national living and working in Iraq since 1988. ‘Ubaid al-Sayyid MakkiMuhammad, aged forty-four, said that on the day police arrested him, he was sellingsecondhand clothes off a street stall, and had just gone into a coffee shop when thepolice arrived:The police came into the coffee shop and told everyone to put theirhands up and face the wall. Then they tied our hands behind our backswith rope and blindfolded us with pieces of cloth, and told us to walktowards the vehicles while crouching… At the Ministry of Interior, theybegan interrogating us individually. I was the second person called forinterrogation, and they beat me and tortured me while still blindfoldedand with my hands tied. They hit me with cables and with metals rods,though I could not be absolutely sure since I couldn’t see. The torturelasted about half an hour, and there were several of them hitting me atthe same time, about five of them. Then they ordered me to put myfingerprint on a piece of paper, or sign it, with my hands tied and whileblindfolded… They only gave us water and food on the third day. Eachperson got a small piece of bread with a tomato, and even then they keptus blindfolded and our hands tied, and fed us themselves. When theAmericans arrived, they untied our hands and removed the blindfolds,and took a group of the detainees outside and gave them food andwater. They also moved other detainees who had been kept outsideunder the sun to a shady area, and gave us medical treatment.123‘Ubaid told Human Rights Watch that that was the only time police had “interrogated”him during the four months he spent in detention. He said they kept him at theCriminal Intelligence facility for thirteen days and then took him to the Transfer Prison,where they were holding a total of sixty-one detainees from the al-Bataween group. Hesaid the police divided them into groups and distributed them among the various cellsthat already housed fifty-five detainees each. He described conditions there as better,with food and water provided to inmates and with family visits allowed. In court, thesame lawyer engaged by the three Tu’ma brothers represented him, also on the samecharge of possession of drugs. Human Rights Watch attended the investigative hearingof the four detainees on October 23. The judge adjourned the hearing for several daysto give him more time to study their files.

The al-Kifah Street arrests, July 11, 2004In a raid similar to that conducted on the al-Bataween neighborhood, forces of theMinistry of Interior’s Criminal Intelligence Directorate carried out widespread arrests onJuly 11, 2004, in the al-Kifah Street neighborhood located near al-Andalus Square in theBab al-Shaikh district of Baghdad. Other arrests were also conducted in the neighboringareas of al-Fadhl, al-Sadriyya and al-Siba’. Iraqi police arrested 527 people, said byofficials to comprise members of criminal gangs involved in serious crimes.As in the al-Bataween case, Ministry of Interior officials announced that the sweeps onal-Kifah and neighboring districts had resulted in the breakup of sixteen criminal gangsinvolved in a variety of criminal activity, including murder, robbery, abduction, and drugtrafficking. The local press quoted the Ministry’s undersecretary for CriminalIntelligence Affairs, Major General Hussain ‘Ali Kamal, as saying that the arrests werecarried out “in cooperation with the judicial authorities to provide the legal frameworkfor the arrest and interrogation of the suspects.”124Human Rights Watch later learnedfrom the judicial authorities that the police carried out the arrests without recourse to thecourts and that judges had not issued any arrest warrants. Rather, the order wasunderstood to have come directly from the minister of interior. Furthermore, the policedenied the detainees access to family members or defense counsel for at least two weeksfollowing their arrest.Criminal Intelligence personnel reportedly released over 400 of them later the same day,while continuing to hold 118, some for over seven weeks, before bringing them beforean investigative judge. It was unclear on what basis they took the decision toimmediately release some of them and detain others. At the Central Criminal Court,Human Rights Watch spoke to seventeen of the detainees arrested in the raid and whowere among those brought before investigative judges during August 2004. One ofthem, Muhammad Fateh Nameq, a thirty-year-old employee of a car windscreen repairshop, said:

We were arrested at around six o’clock in the evening. A police patrolcame, and they forced us into pickup trucks and took us to the Ministryof Interior. When we arrived at the compound, they divided us into twogroups. The bigger group was released almost immediately, and the restof us were kept there. We were still not blindfolded at that point, and Isaw five or six masked informers who came and gave information to thepolice about some of those in my group. They pointed to several peoplewho they said were involved in abductions, and they were taken upstairsto a different place, and the rest of us were put in a large hall where theyregistered our names.125Muhammad said Criminal Intelligence personnel held him there for two weeks, duringwhich time they frequently and individually interrogated him and the others about avariety of crimes, including abductions and robberies. He said they beat him duringinterrogation, particularly on his back and chest. Another detainee who was with him incourt, Arkan Rahim Lafta, a taxi driver aged twenty-seven, told Human Rights Watchthat interrogators slapped, kicked and punched him, and beat him all over the body witha wooden stick.126Both were then transferred to al-Kadhimiyya police station, wherethey were held for a further two weeks before being brought to court. They saiddetaining officials did not allow them family visits either at the Criminal Intelligencefacility or at the police station.Three other detainees arrested in the al-Kifah Street raid but only brought to court onAugust 21, six weeks after their arrest, gave similar accounts to Human Rights Watch.They included Sa’ad Hassun Kadhim, a twenty-nine-year-old man from al-Najaf whowas working in a bakery in Baghdad at the time:I was inside the bakery when the police arrived, at about 7:15 in theevening. They searched me and two others and then took us toCriminal Intelligence. I stayed there seventeen days. We were put in ahall together with others from the al-Kifah group. One of them was ayoung boy aged fourteen or fifteen. A smaller group of those arrestedwere taken up to the seventh floor [in the main Ministry building], whereI heard that twenty-five people arrested in the al-Bataween raid werealso being kept. We were not given any food and had to buy itourselves. We were not allowed any family visits there. Even now, afterHuman Rights Watch interview with Muhammad Fateh Nameq, Central Criminal Court, Baghdad, August 7,2004.126125

my transfer to al-Khadra’ police station, I have no visits and my familydoes not know where I am. To tell the truth, I was beaten by the officerduring interrogation. In the end I was made to sign a paper, but I don’tknow what it said because I was blindfolded at the time. One personheld with us, called Hazem Hamid, who is about twenty-seven years oldand had a tattoo on his forehead, was badly beaten and tortured withelectricity.127Sa’ad told Human Rights Watch that the reason Criminal Intelligence personneltransferred the detainees to the various police station was because there had been amortar attack against the Ministry of Interior building. He added that at the al-Khadra’police station, where he was held in a cell with thirty-two others, the police forceddetainees to buy their own food, and did not permit him and some of the others anyfamily visits. Two other detainees, a twenty-six-year-old employee of the Ministry of Oiland an eighteen-year-old blacksmith, who were transferred to the Baghdad al-Jadidapolice station described similar treatment while held by Criminal Intelligence, includingbeing beaten and signing statements under duress.128The accounts given by these four detainees were consistent with those of othersinterviewed by Human Rights Watch in connection with the al-Kifah Street arrests.Most appear to have been held on average for two weeks at the Criminal Intelligencefacility in the Ministry of Interior compound before being transferred to various policestations across Baghdad. Several of the detainees interviewed also told Human RightsWatch that Criminal Intelligence continued to hold forty-eight of those arrested in theraid on July 11, beyond the initial two weeks, and that they were still there as of earlyAugust 2004, but the organization could not independently verify this. Thosetransferred to police stations described conditions of detention there as generally better,including being allowed family visits in most cases, and not being ill-treated. Several toldHuman Rights Watch that interrogators had not tortured them at the CriminalIntelligence facility “because there was no evidence against us.” Others, however, saidthey had been beaten and otherwise ill-treated to force them into confessing to variouscrimes, including robberies.Human Rights Watch attended several of the hearings and spoke to the judges about theevidence gathered by the police. The judges concurred, saying that with the exception ofHuman Rights Watch interview with Sa’ad Hassun Kadhim, Central Criminal Court, Baghdad, August 21,2004.Human Rights Watch interviews with Hussain ‘Adel Karim Khan and Amjad Sa’di Muhammad, CentralCriminal Court, Baghdad, August 21, 2004.128127

a handful of cases, there was very little of substance to justify an extension of theirdetention and that they had no choice but to order the release of the detainees. At onesession observed in mid-August, for example, an investigative judge released sixteendetainees after questioning them for only a few minutes, saying that “there was nothingin their files.”129Human Rights Watch had spoken to five of these detainees before thehearing. Criminal Intelligence had held them for sixteen days before transferring themto the al-Rashad police station. They said they were not aware of what the chargesagainst them were, and had been held for forty-one days before seeing a judge. Inanother case, a detainee brought to court on August 30 2004 told Human Rights Watchthat Criminal Intelligence held him for fifteen days before his transfer to the al-Dorapolice station. He had been detained for a total of fifty days before seeing aninvestigative judge.130Like many of his co-defendants, the judge ordered him releasedthat day for lack of evidence.Investigative judges ordered the release of the majority of the detainees arrested inconnection with the al-Kifah Street raid and referred to the Central Criminal Court.They told Human Rights Watch in mid-September 2004 that although cases were stillbeing processed through the court, only in ten cases did the available evidence againstthem warrant an extension of their detention period to allow for the completion of thecriminal investigations.

Other casesHuman Rights Watch also interviewed thirty-three detainees arrested outside the contextof mass roundups, on suspicion of involvement in a variety of crimes includingabduction, murder, and money laundering. Most had been referred to the CentralCriminal Court by the Major Crimes Directorate, Criminal Intelligence Directorate, andthe Directorate of Ministry Security and Welfare. The majority were in court for the firsttime for questioning by an investigative judge, but in a small number their cases hadreached the trial stage. Their accounts of their treatment at the hands of theirinterrogators, and of conditions of detention generally, were highly consistent. Inseveral of the cases, the detainees bore visible injuries that appeared recent andconsistent with their description of the treatment they said they had suffered indetention.

Only in six cases examined by Human Rights Watch at the Central Criminal Court haddetaining officials brought the defendants before an investigative judge within twenty-four hours of their arrest. Typically detainees were held for periods ranging from one toeight weeks.131In the majority of cases, the detainees had no access to defense counselbefore being brought to court, and were represented by court-appointed lawyers wholacked any knowledge of their clients’ cases and had no prior access to the evidenceagainst them. Below are details of six cases where Human Rights Watch interviewed thedefendants or attended their investigative hearings, or both:

Case 1Tahsin Khalil Ibrahim: aged thirty-three from the al-Waset governorate, living inBaghdad. The police arrested him on August 5, 2004, at his home in the Hay al-Hussainarea in the al-Rusafa sector the city, accusing him of facilitating the commission of anabduction that took place one month earlier. They held and interrogated him at theMajor Crimes Directorate for five days before his referral to the Central Criminal Court.One of the many detainees who said police had attempted to extort money from him inexchange for his release, he told Human Rights Watch:Our house was raided by a squad of people wearing civilian clothes andcarrying police badges. It was about seven o’clock in the morning.They took my identity card and took me to the Major Crimes[Directorate]. They tied my hands in the car and then blindfolded mefor about five hours after we got to the prison. I was beaten duringinterrogation and tortured with electric shocks. I kept asking the officerto tell me what the charge against me was so I could answer him, but hesaid I was not allowed to speak, and the torture just continued. In theinterrogation sessions, there was one chief officer and one or two otherswho were beating me. Sometimes this would last for five hourscontinuously, usually at night. I heard that there were Americans at theprison but I never saw any of them. I was held in a room measuringfour by five square meters, and today there were fifty-eight of us inthere. We were not allowed family visits or to contact a lawyer. I wasasked to pay two million dinars in return for my release, but I don’t havethat kind of money. Others were also asked for money in return for

Case 2Firas ‘Imad Sadeq al-Dulaimi: age unknown, living in the al-Sha’ab district of Baghdad,one of three detainees referred to the Central Criminal Court on August 18, 2004,accused of involvement in several crimes involving theft, abduction, and murder.Criminal Intelligence Directorate personnel arrested him on June 23, 2004, and held himfor eight weeks before his referral to an investigative judge. When Human Rights Watchsaw him on August 18, Firas was in poor physical condition: he was limping as a resultof an apparent injury to his left foot, his left arm was in a makeshift sling, and on theouter side of his upper left arm there were clear and reddish lacerations which appearedvery recent. He appeared to have difficulty in focusing and to be in obvious pain.Upon questioning during his investigative hearing, which Human Rights Watchattended, Firas admitted to involvement in the abduction of two individuals for which aransom of 1,150,000 Iraqi dinars was demanded and obtained. He denied other chargesleveled against him. When asked about his injuries, he told the judge that he hadsustained the injuries to his left arm (broken bones and a wound on the upper arm)when his car overturned as he was being chased by police on the day of his arrest. Hesaid that while in detention, he received no medical treatment for his broken arm, andthat police beat him with a wooden stick on the wound sustained to his upper left armwhile interrogating him. Additionally, he said they had beaten him on his left foot wherehe had had an operation in the past, causing him to limp from the pain.The investigative judge hearing the case ordered that Firas be referred for medicalexamination to verify the torture allegations he had made. At the Medico-LegalInstitute, where such referrals are usually made, Human Rights Watch found no recordsindicating that detaining officials had implemented the judge’s referral order in the fourweeks following Firas’s appearance in court on August 18.

Rights Watch that he had been arrested three times on the same charge, and was held inU.S. custody on one of those occasions. His last arrest took place on August 20, 2004,when police held him at the Major Crimes Directorate in al-Rusafa. He told HumanRights Watch:I was arrested on the basis of information from a secret informant.They took me at lunchtime, just before noon prayers, from a car park inthe al-Iskan district. There were eight of them, dressed in plainclothesand driving two civilian cars. They tied my hands and blindfolded me,and pointed a weapon at me to force me to get into the car. Once wearrived at the Major Crimes [Directorate], I was hit hard across my backwithout even being asked a single question. Then I was put in a smallroom with over fifty people in it. It was so crowded that it was difficultto breathe. Later that afternoon, I was taken to another room whereCaptain [name withheld] accused me of having stolen from the bank1,300,000,000 dinars. I replied that if I had that kind of money Iwouldn’t have stayed in Iraq. He left the room, and suddenly I wasbeing beaten from all directions. They used a metal pipe on my backand the marks are still there…They left my hands bound with metal handcuffs for two days. Thenthey took me to another room where there were about seventy-five oreighty detainees. There was no room even to squat. Everyone seemedto have lice. On the third day, I was interrogated again. This time theyuntied my hands and removed the blindfolds. The captain said, “Wehave intelligence on you, but if you don’t talk we won’t let you go.” Hethreatened me with electric shocks, and said he would bring my parentsand torture them in front of me. So I was obliged to agree, and signed astatement confessing to having stolen a lesser amount of 350 milliondinars.133Khalid also told Human Rights Watch that police had arrested his two brothers, Ra’ed,aged thirty, and Ra’ad, aged twenty-six, five months earlier in the same bank theft case.Police tortured both while they were held at the Balat al-Shuhada’ police station, whichhe said he learned about after their mother visited them there. Human Rights Watchindependently interviewed Ra’ed some six weeks later during a visit to al-KarradaCriminal Court (see Appendix, Case D).Human Rights Watch interview with Khalid Muhammad ‘Atiyya, Central Criminal Court, Baghdad, August 25,2004.133

Case 4Muhammad Hassan al-Sayyid Mulla Hassan: a forty-one-year-old Kurd fromSulaimaniyya who was arrested on August 20 or 21, 2004, by personnel of theDirectorate of Ministry Security and Welfare. He was among seven people arrested in araid on a hotel in the al-Bataween district of Baghdad, five of them guests and the othertwo employees. He told Human Rights Watch when referred to court one week laterthat he had come down to Baghdad from Sulaimaniyya for an operation on his leg, andwhich he had not yet undergone when he was arrested. According to his account:There were a large number of them, dressed in civilian clothes andarmed. It was about ten o’clock in the evening. I was in my room at thetime, and they took me as well as a friend of mine. They blindfolded meand didn’t give a reason for the arrest. I don’t know where they tookme, and I remained blindfolded for three days and without questioning.When they interrogated me, they asked about a booby-trapped car thatthey accused me of having brought from al-Falluja to Baghdad. I said Ididn’t know anything about it. During interrogation, I was blindfoldedthe whole time, and in the end I was made to sign a paper whileblindfolded also. I was beaten with cables and hoses on my back andlegs. The same thing happened to my friend Haidar. They told usbefore we came to court that if we didn’t confess before theinvestigative judge, we would get the same treatment when we returnedto the cell. We had no family visits and no possibility of contacting alawyer.134Human Rights Watch also spoke to the two hotel employees arrested in the same raid,one of whom worked as a receptionist and the other as a cleaner.135They gave similaraccounts of the raid and their subsequent detention. When Human Rights Watch sawthe group in court, several of them were half-dressed, some only in trousers and otherswith under-vests but no shirts. One of those who wore a shirt lent it to the others inturn when they appeared before the investigative judge. They explained to him thatupon arrest, the police did not give them the chance to get dressed and arrested them inwhatever clothes they happened to be wearing at that moment.

At the end of the investigative hearing, which Human Rights Watch attended, the judgerenewed their period of detention for two days to enable him to question the secretinformant on the basis of whose information the arrests were carried out. An official ofthe Directorate of Ministry Security and Welfare, who had accompanied the defendantsto court, requested that they be transferred to the custody of the Major CrimesDirectorate pending their next court appearance. He told the judge, while HumanRights Watch was present, that there was no room to continue holding them at theMinistry and that the Directorate’s personnel were keeping the defendants in an officer’sroom. The judge questioned the secret informant the following day, August 29, afterwhich he ordered the release of the seven defendants for lack of evidence.

Case 5Saif Sa’ad Ilyas: a thirty-one-year-old Iraqi man living in the United Arab Emirates whowas visiting Baghdad when he was arrested on February 5, 2004. He told Human RightsWatch he was at home in the al-‘Alwiyya district of the city when police arrived:They began hitting me as they searched the house, but they didn’t findanything. Then they took me to a branch of the al-Rashid Bank, where Ilater understood there was a secret informant. I was accused of havingstolen money from the bank during the events [the fall of the SaddamHussein government in April 2003]. But I was in Diyala at that time. Iwas taken to the Baghdad al-Jadida police station, where I stayed foreight days. They slapped and punched me and beat me with woodensticks while blindfolded. Then I was transferred to the Major Crimes[Directorate], where I got the same treatment. They blindfolded me andtied my hands, and hit me with sticks and metal rods to make meconfess to the theft. I stayed there for over a month and was then takento al-‘Alwiyya police station, then to theTasfirat[Transfer Prison] forthree months. After that I spent two months in Abu Ghraib, then backto theTasfirat.So far, my father has paid the police twenty to twenty-fivewaraqa[U.S. $2,000-2,500] in exchange for my release, but they stillhaven’t let me go. They are asking for threedafater[U.S. $30,000].136After his court appearance on September 18, 2004, Saif returned to the Major CrimesDirectorate. Police officials told Human Rights Watch the Money Laundering Unit atthe Directorate wanted him for further questioning.

Case 6Yasser ‘Abdul-Hamid ‘Abdul-Razzaq, ‘Ammar Abdul-Hamid ‘Abdul-Razzaq, and FaruqKarim Muhyi Zamel: two brothers and their maternal uncle who were arrested in lateJanuary and early February 2004, and held at the Major Crimes Directorate facility in al-‘Amiriyya. Interrogators questioned them about several crimes involving robbery andabduction. Human Rights Watch interviewed them in early September 2004 at the al-Karrada criminal court, where police had brought them in as witnesses in another case.The uncle, Faruq Karim Muhyi Zamel, aged 39, told Human Rights Watch that he wasarrested with one of his nephews, ‘Ammar, on February 4, 2004:During interrogation, they hit me with their fists and kicked me. I wastortured with electric shocks to my ears and genitals. They also beat mewith plastic bottles filled with water, which was very painful, particularlyon an area on my left arm where I had had an operation in the past tocorrect a deformity. As a result, my arm swelled and the wound becameinfected, but I did not receive any medical treatment for that. Theinterrogation continued for four days continuously, with beatings andtorture. On 23 February the investigative judge [at the Central CriminalCourt] issued an order to send me to the Medico-Legal [Institute] aftermy nephew Yasser told him about how they were torturing me. But Iwas never sent there. Instead, they tortured me again, and on 12 MarchI was transferred to theTasfirat[Transfer Prison] in al-Rusafa. No onetortured or threatened us there, but we are still there and only came tocourt today as witnesses in another case.137Faruq’s nephew Yasser, aged thirty-one, told Human Rights Watch that police hadarrested him eight days before the arrest of his uncle and brother, on January 27, 2004.According to his account, he had gone to al-Sa’doun police station to answer chargesbrought against him by a police officer there, and was taken into custody. He believedthe real reason for his arrest was that he had testified against one of the police officers ina corruption case involving extortion of money from detainees in exchange for release,and that the officer in question had then brought trumped up charges against him:On the first day and a half they beat me during interrogation, especiallywithfalaqa.I was blindfolded, and my hands were tied behind my back,and three of them kicked me all over the body. They also used

electricity by attaching wires to my ears. On seven occasions variouspeople were brought to the police station to see whether they couldidentify me in connection with various robberies and abductions, butnone of them did. On 29 January they referred me to the judicialinvestigator, and in mid-February I was transferred to the Major Crimes[Directorate]. On 23 February I was brought before the investigativejudge. I told him that my uncle Faruq was being tortured, and otherstoo. The judge ordered that my uncle be referred to the Medico-Legal[Institute]. He summoned the police liaison officer at the court andgave him the written order, and told him, if he failed to obey the orderhe would have him arrested. After the hearing, I returned to the MajorCrimes [Directorate]. They didn’t touch me, but they took Faruq andtortured him once more withfalaqaand electricity for six days. Theyasked him why he had complained, through me, about being tortured,and that if he did so again, they would bring other charges against him.Anyway, they never took him for the medical examination. The onlyreason they treated us in that way was because we had no money, butthey took lots of money from others who were then released.138On March 12, Faruq and his two nephews were moved to the Transfer Prison in al-Rusafa, where they remained until May. They were then transferred to Abu GhraibPrison for some forty days, and returned to the Transfer Prison in early June 2004.When Human Rights Watch interviewed them, all three had already spent nearly eightmonths in pre-trial detention.During several of the trials observed by Human Rights Watch involving serious criminaloffenses, the defendants told the panel of judges that the police had tortured themduring interrogation. The ICCPR provides that a defendant may not be compelled toconfess guilt.139The Human Rights Committee has ruled that the burden of proof is onthe state to provide that a confession has been detained without duress.140In thefollowing three cases, it is not clear whether the judges based their verdicts onconfessions allegedly gathered through torture.In a trial held on July 31, 2004, three defendants accused of theft each said they hadbeen beaten and otherwise tortured since their arrest on September 28, 2003. One ofHuman Rights Watch interview with Yasser ‘Abdul-Hamid ‘Abdul-Razzaq, al-Karrada Criminal Court,Baghdad, September 9, 2004.139140138

them told the judge that the interrogating officer had dictated the “confession” to him.He also said he had sustained a bullet wound to his left leg during arrest, for which hereceived no timely medical treatment, resulting in the subsequent amputation of the limbbelow the knee. The three defendants in this case were also among seven defendantsaccused in another case involving the abduction of a seven-year-old girl for ransom.Their trial also took place on the same day. During deliberations, Human Rights Watchinterviewed the seven defendants. All said interrogators of the Major CrimesDirectorate had tortured them while holding them for some three weeks after theirarrest in September 2003. The methods cited included suspension from door handlesfor prolonged periods with the hands tied behind the back; electric shocks applied to theearlobes; extraction of finger and toe nails; and severe beatings using wooden sticks,cables and belts.141Although the defendants showed Human Rights Watch scar tissue on various parts oftheir bodies, which they said they had sustained under torture, ten months had elapsedsince the alleged abuse had taken place. There were no medical reports attesting to thenature of the injuries they described, suggesting that they had either not made statementsto that effect when first brought before an investigating judge, or that no decision hadbeen taken to refer them for medical examination. In the first trial, the judge sentencedeach defendant to six years’ imprisonment.142In the second trial, he sentenced six of thedefendants to life imprisonment and acquitted the seventh for lack of evidence.143In a separate case, Human Rights Watch interviewed two defendants on trial on August1, 2004 for an armed robbery committed on November 15, 2003. Both told the panel ofjudges that the police had tortured them to extract confessions while holding them at theMajor Crimes Directorate. Sabah ‘Ali Hammadi, one of the defendants, told HumanRights Watch:They tortured me by putting wires to my genitals and electrocuting meto force me to confess. I was also beaten on my left ankle, where I hadhad a platinum rod inserted during an operation in the past. They hitme there with cables and wooden sticks, which caused enormous pain.My hands were tied behind my back by the wrists and I was suspendedfor a long period of time, causing dislocation in one of my shoulderHuman Rights Watch interviews with ‘Adnan Talib Dayikh, Riad Muhammad Hamid, Fa’iz Fadhil ‘Alwan al-Janabi, Ahmad Na’im ‘Abbas al-Zaidi, Muhammad Hatem ‘Abd al-Jabbar al-Tamimi, Haidar Ahmad Mirza al-Nu’aimi, and Shahrazad Dakhil Muhsin, Central Criminal Court, Baghdad, July 31, 2004.142143141

joints. They tried to force me to sit on a broken bottle neck but I didn’tdo it. We were held in a communal cell, about 170 detainees all packedtogether. We could not contact a lawyer, and we had no family visits.The torture usually took place after five o’clock in the afternoon, whenthe Americans left. They blindfolded us and took us in a vehicle to anearby building a few minutes’ drive away, usually at night, forinterrogation and torture. I stayed at the Major Crimes Directorate fortwo months until my transfer to Abu Ghraib in mid-January 2004.144His co-defendant, ‘Issa ‘Abbud Sardar, gave Human Rights Watch a similar account ofhis treatment in detention. He said his interrogators usually tortured him whileblindfolded and with his hands tied behind his back, and that on one occasion theyinterrogated him for seven hours at a stretch. Upon transfer to Abu Ghraib, he saidconditions improved: “Our treatment by the Americans was much better. While there, Ineeded an appendix operation, and they arranged it for me. If it had been the Iraqis,they would not have done it. Treatment by the Iraqis is terrible. Saddam is still herewith us.”145As in the cases of other defendants whose trials Human Rights Watchobserved, the chief judge informed them that any torture allegations would need to bebacked up by medical reports. There were none in this case, and taking into account theavailable evidence against them, the court sentenced each defendant to eight years’imprisonment.146

VIII. Torture and ill-treatment of children held in adult facilitiesHuman Rights Watch continues to receive reports of children being held together withadults in detention facilities under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Interior. Thechildren include both criminal suspects and others suspected of having taken part inclashes against government forces, including those suspected of links with the MahdiArmy. Several of the adult detainees arrested in the context of the clashes in al-Najaf inAugust 2004 told Human Rights Watch they had seen young detainees held with them inthe came cell, whose ages they estimated to be between fifteen and seventeen. Adultdetainees suspected of having committed serious criminal offenses likewise said severalchildren were being held with them at the Major Crimes Directorate facility in al-‘Amiriyya. The Directorate’s police officials also told Human Rights Watch that theyheld children in their custody.

Iraq acceded to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)147in 1994. The CRCrequires children deprived of their liberty to be separated from adults “unless it is in thechild’s best interest not to do so”; the ICCPR prohibition on separating children fromadults in custody has no such exception.148The right of child detainees to be held separately from adults is also provided for underIraq’s Juveniles Welfare Law.149Article 52(2) of this law stipulates that in areas whereseparate detention facilities are not available, measures must be taken to prevent childrenfrom mixing with adult detainees. Orders promulgated by the CPA on the managementof detention facilities also specified that “Young untried prisoners shall be kept separatefrom adults and shall where possible be detained in separate institutions.”150The requirement for the separation of child detainees has not been followed in somecases. Human Rights Watch found that such cases sometimes arose when policeapprehended children as part of a large sweep in a given area, where they arrested scoresand sometimes several hundred people as part of the government’s efforts to crackdown on violent crime. Police invariably conduct such sweeps without warrants, andchildren are sometimes caught up.151Among the 149 people arrested in the district ofal-Bataween on June 27, for example, U.S. soldiers of the Oregon Army National Guardreported having seen a young boy, identified as fourteen years old, among the detaineesabused at the grounds of the Ministry of Interior.152At the Central Criminal Court,Human Rights Watch spoke to the wife of one of the detainees picked up in the al-

Law No. 76 of 1983, as amended. Under Article 3(2) of this law, a juvenile is defined as someone above theage of nine and below the age of eighteen. Article 10 specifies the types of facilities where juveniles may beheld, depending on their age. Article 48 stipulates that upon arrest, juveniles must be handed over immediatelyto the juveniles police force, responsible for referring them to an investigative judge or the juvenile courts.Article 52(2) stipulates that in areas where separate detention facilities are not available, measures must betaken to prevent juveniles from mixing with adult detainees.CPA/MEM/8 June 2003/02 (Management of Detention and Prison Facilities), Section 30(5). Until the fall theformer Iraqi government in April 2003, juveniles were held in prisons or detention facilities under the authority ofthe Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs. Under CPA authority, the Directorate of Juvenile Prisons was placedunder the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice (CPA/ORD/8 June 2003/10: Management of Detention andPrison Facilities, Section 1).Article 63 of the Juveniles Welfare Law stipulates that the names of juvenile detainees, their addresses andthe names of their schools may not be publicly divulged, or their photographs taken or other measures adoptedthat would result in their identities being revealed. Among the suspects rounded up in the al-Bataween raid ofJune 27, 2004, and who were photographed or filmed by journalists at the invitation of Ministry of Interiorofficials, there were reportedly four juveniles.152151150

Bataween raid. She said that in addition to her husband, police arrested her fourteen-year-old brother-in-law [name withheld by Human Rights Watch] on June 27:I tried to have him moved from Criminal Intelligence to theTasfirat[Transfer Prison], but they would not accept him there because he was ajuvenile, and they said he should be taken to the Juveniles Prison. Atthe Juveniles Prison, he was not accepted either because his papers werenot complete, so his case remained with Intelligence. He stayed therefor over one month. Then he was brought here to the Central [Criminal]Court, and the judge ordered his release. When he was brought tocourt, the judicial investigator told him that according to his file, he hadconfessed to possessing drugs at the time of his arrest. But he repliedthat he had made no confession, that he had been made to sign astatement while blindfolded, and that he was beaten on his back andwithfalaqa.153Four detainees interviewed by Human Rights Watch from the al-Bataween group inOctober 2004 reported that three children were among those arrested (see above). Oneof those interviewed, a Sudanese national, said the children “were brought to the interiorministry’s detention facility with us and were tortured and beaten just like us. They werekept there for fifteen days, and when we were moved to theTasfirat[Transfer Prison],the officials there refused to accept them. We don’t know what happened to them afterthat, but we heard that they were released.”154In such cases, where the police do not find any identification documents attesting to thejuvenile’s date of birth, they will usually hold him with adult co-detainees and subjecthim to the same treatment. This is particularly so in cases where children are just shortof their eighteenth birthday and their physical appearance may not suggest that they arein fact children. Human Rights Watch came across several such cases at the CentralCriminal Court, where Ministry of Interior agencies had held detainees for several daysor weeks before bringing them before an investigative judge. Given that they weredenied contact either with family members or defense counsel, their appearance beforethe investigative judge represents the first opportunity to inform officials other thanthose detaining or interrogating them that they are children. No efforts appear to bemade by officials of the Major Crimes Directorate to establish the ages of such detaineesHuman Rights Watch interview with the sister-in-law of a juvenile from the al-Bataween group [namewithheld by Human Rights Watch at her request], Central Criminal Court, Baghdad, August 23, 2004.Human Rights Watch interview with ‘Ubaid al-Sayyid Makki Muhammad, Central Criminal Court, Baghdad,October 23, 2004.154153

beforehand. Several investigative judges told Human Rights Watch that in such cases,they would normally order the police authorities to make contact with the detainees’families in order to obtain the necessary identification, or ask the detainees to do so.However there was usually no follow-up to ensure that the police authoritiesimplemented the judges’ decisions in a prompt and timely manner. The detaineesthemselves were not, as a rule, in a position to follow up the matter themselves untiltheir transfer to a facility where authorities permit family visits, such as police stations orthe Transfer Prison, and which may take several days or weeks. They generally couldnot depend on their legal counsel to act on their behalf in this regard. Court-appointedlawyers who regard their role as confined to the courtroom, and who in practice carryout little or no work on behalf of their clients outside of the investigative hearing or trialsession, represent the vast majority of detainees whom Human Rights Watchinterviewed.Where official identification documents were not available, investigative judgessometimes would refer the detainees to the Medico-Legal Institute in Baghdad toundergo tests to estimate their age.155In practice, such referrals rarely took place. Oneinvestigative judge told Human Rights Watch that often it was “not in the interest” ofthe detainee to have his age estimated, since it was only an estimate and the detainee maybe judged as over eighteen.156An examination of external trauma records at the Medico-Legal Institute by Human Rights Watch showed that investigative judges made no suchreferrals in the period June 1 to September 14, 2004, even though several such cases hadpassed through the court system in the same period. According to some of the judges,detainees sometimes claimed to be children in the hope of being transferred to a juvenilefacility where conditions of detention are better, and in the hope of being treated moreleniently.While acknowledging the wisdom of giving such detainees the benefit of the doubt andensuring their transfer to juvenile facilities until their age is established, both judicial andpolice officials told Human Rights Watch that juvenile facilities do not as a rule take any

At the Medico-Legal Institute, a forensic doctor told Human Rights Watch that the principal method used forestimating the age of persons to establish whether or not they are juveniles is through an examination of bonedevelopment, based on x-ray images taken of the joints such as the hips, elbows, wrists and knees. In somecases, an examination of dental development is also taken into account. The doctor added that “we havedeveloped sufficient expertise whereby, based on the x-ray examination and our assessment of the person’sgeneral appearance, the margin of error in this regard is negligible,” (Human Rights Watch discussion with aforensic doctor [name withheld by Human Rights Watch], Medico-Legal Institute, Baghdad, September 14,2004).

detainee into their custody without the necessary identification papers that prove thatthey arebona fidechildren. Police officials at the Central Criminal Court also said that atthe Major Crimes Directorate, they had insufficient facilities to allow for children to beheld separately from adult detainees. Whichever option is followed in trying to establishthe age of detainees who state that they are children, all entail continuing delays duringwhich time the detainees continue to be held in adult facilities. They also suffer thesame treatment, including being subjected to torture.One of the juvenile detainees interviewed by Human Rights Watch was Faisal [full namewithheld by Human Rights Watch], a school student living in the Abu Ghraib district ofBaghdad and who gave his age as fifteen. Police arrested him with his maternal cousinon July 25, 2004, after accusing them of involvement in the abduction of a Lebanesenational a week earlier. He told Human Rights Watch:I remember it was a Sunday. I was arrested by Criminal Intelligence andtaken to the Interior [Ministry]. They held me on the seventh floor, in acell with twenty-two adults. During interrogation they blindfolded meand tied my hands behind my back, and then beat me with cables andfalaqa.I kept saying I had nothing to say about the abduction, that I hadnothing to do with it. They treated us very badly in that place. They didnot give us any food, and we had to buy our own.157Criminal Intelligence personnel transferred Faisal to the al-Qanat police station shortlybefore his appearance in court.158At his investigative hearing later that day, observed byHuman Rights Watch, he described the treatment he had received in detention.159Whenasked by the judge to verify his age, he said that he had no means of producingidentification since he was not permitted contact with the outside world and had nofamily visits. He offered to give the name of his school, where his teachers could attestto the fact that he was still a student and could give his age. The judge in this casedecided that in order to avoid further delays, and to avoid a situation where an

Human Rights Watch interview with Faisal [full name withheld], Central Criminal Court, Baghdad, August 18,2004.His cousin Hassan, aged twenty, told Human Rights Watch that Criminal Intelligence personnel had alsorepeatedly beaten, boxed, slapped, and kicked him during interrogation, and made him sign a statement whileblindfolded. Two weeks after his arrest, they transferred him to the same police station, where he saidtreatment was better, although he was not permitted family visits there either. (Human Rights Watch interviewwith Hassan [full name withheld], Central Criminal Court, Baghdad, August 18, 2004).The hearing took place in the presence of a Criminal Intelligence official, who motioned Faisal to keep quietwhen he began telling the judge that two other people arrested in the same case had already testified that hehad nothing to do with the abduction.159158

assessment of his age by doctors at the Medico-Legal Institute could conclude that hewas over eighteen years of age, the detaining authorities should make contact with hisfamily in order to obtain the necessary identification document. Six days later, in thecourse of following up this case, the investigative judge told Human Rights Watch thatno identification document had been produced as yet. On the same day, Human RightsWatch interviewed three detainees held in the custody of Criminal Intelligence, who saidthat in the room where they were being held, there were “two or three juveniles,” one ofwhom was accused of involvement in the abduction of a Lebanese national.160Policeofficials eventually transferred Faisal to the Juveniles Prison in early September when,according to the investigative judge dealing with his case, his relatives appeared in courtwith identification documents confirming his age. He had been held by CriminalIntelligence with adult detainees for at least one month, and a further two weeks at apolice station, before reaching a juvenile facility.In several other cases seen by Human Rights Watch, the detainees appeared not to knowtheir exact age, or could only cite their year of birth. One such case was that of ‘Ali [fullname withheld by Human Rights Watch], a school student who said he was born in1986. Upon being asked by Human Rights Watch for a more precise date of birth, hereplied that he was unsure of the day but that he was born in the month of December,making him some four months short of his eighteenth birthday. The police had arrestedhim two days earlier, August 26, 2004, in the street near his home located in a housingcomplex close to the Lunapark (Madinatal-Al’ab)in the al-Rusafa sector of Baghdad. Hesaid he was unsure of the charges against him, but that a length of cable was found nearthe spot where the police had arrested him, and which they suspected he had stolen foruse in some illegal activity. He added that another person who was with him at the time,whose name he gave as Haidar [full name withheld by Human Rights Watch], managedto flee from the police:It happened last Thursday. A group of policemen arrived and made meget into their car. It was about six o’clock in the evening. Theyblindfolded me and tied my hands behind my back before I sat in thecar. I remained blindfolded until this morning when they brought me tocourt. I was kept in a room with seven other people. On the first daythey took me for interrogation. They asked me questions about theMahdi Army and about various mortar attacks that had taken place, andwhether I knew Haidar. They beat me with cables and a metal pipe andThe three detainees declined to give their names when Human Rights Watch interviewed them at the CentralCriminal Court on August 24, 2004. They said they were themselves accused of the illegal possession ofweapons and had been arrested fifteen days earlier. They said they had received “the usual treatment” underinterrogation, namely repeated beating with cables, hosepipes and other implements.160

with their hands. They also beat me at around three o’clock in themorning after I had been taken back to the cell. Mostly I was torturedbyfalaqa.My parents don’t know where I am now. On the first day, Ispent what money I had on food. On the second day, some of theguards gave us money to buy the food.161‘Ali showed Human Rights Watch four scars on his lower left arm, measuring some tento fifteen centimeters long, which he said were the result of beatings with cables. Healso said he had other marks on his back but declined to show these to Human RightsWatch since the interview was being conducted in the Major Crimes Room where policeofficials were present. Human Rights Watch attended his hearing later that day beforethe investigative judge, who asked him to remove his shirt and show him his back. Thisrevealed what appeared to be fresh lacerations and welts to his upper back. The judgeasked the detainee how he came to have these injuries or who had beaten him. ‘Alireplied, “I don’t know because I was blindfolded the whole time.” He appearedreluctant to repeat what he had told Human Rights Watch about his treatment indetention, and the judge did not refer him for a medical examination. He was ordereddetained for a further week, apparently to give the police more time to apprehend thesecond suspect in the case. His file showed that he was being held in the custody of theDirectorate of Ministry Security and Welfare.Among the detainees arrested in the context of the August 2004 clashes in al-Najaf andinterviewed following their release (see Section VI) was a child, Hassan Muhan ‘Abbud,aged seventeen, from Baghdad. He told Human Rights Watch that he had been visitingal-Najaf with a group of friends when they were arrested at a checkpoint manned byplainclothes police in mid-August 2004:It was a Wednesday, at around nine in the morning. There were sevenof us, including the driver. After the police fired in the air, we stoppedthe car at the checkpoint, which was on Nisan Street close to al-HakimHospital. They handcuffed us, put us in two cars and took us to aschool. I don’t know which school it was. Although we were notblindfolded, all of us were from Baghdad and did not know our wayaround al-Najaf well. When we arrived at the school, there were morepolice there in plainclothes. They took us into a classroom and accusedus of being members of the Mahdi Army. One of them pulled out abayonet and threatened us with it, and slapped and punched us. WeHuman Rights Watch interview with ‘Ali [full name withheld by Human Rights Watch], Central Criminal Court,Baghdad, August 28, 2004.161

stayed there for about an hour, and then they took us to the PoliceDirectorate. This time, we were both blindfolded and handcuffed.When we entered, they immediately started hitting us. As we stood inthe doorway, any policeman who happened to pass by would eitherpunch or hit us. After that, they took us to a large hall, where we werealso beaten. We were interrogated individually. Sometimes thirty ormore of them would come into the hall and start beating us randomly. Iwas released ten days later.162One of the others arrested with Hassan Muhan ‘Abbud told Human Rights Watch thathe had been wearing a black shirt at the time of his arrest, which he said made the policesuspect that he was a member of the Mahdi Army. He described similar treatment indetention.163

IX. Medical examinations and investigation of torture complaintsIn August and September 2004, Human Rights Watch visited the Medico-Legal Institutein Baghdad and studied archive records relating to detainees referred there for medicalexamination in connection with torture allegations.164The organization looked throughrecords for the period June 1 to September 14, 2004, focusing on the period followingthe appointment of the Iraqi Interim Government. For comparison, Human RightsWatch also examined records for the first three months of 2004.An investigative authority, which may be either a judicial authority or a police authorityacting on the basis of a court order, refers all cases involving external trauma to theMedico-Legal Institute. A panel of three doctors examines each individual referred, andthe institute’s director, Dr. Fa’iq Amin Bakr, conducts an additional examination. Theydetermine whether there are visible traces of external trauma, whether these wereinflicted by another person or more likely to be self-induced, the probable cause of suchinjuries, and their approximate age. Dr. Bakr told Human Rights Watch that suchreferrals, particularly from the criminal courts and police stations, were made to theinstitute on a regular basis each month, but said he could not indicate the numbers ofsuch referrals in an average month.165

Medical records for male detainees covering the period beginning June to mid-September 2004, showed that authorities had made sixteen such referrals,166fourteen ofthem on the basis of court orders from the criminal courts or from judicial investigatorsbased at police stations, and two from the Major Crimes Directorate.167The medicalreports for ten of those cases, one of which involved a child, concluded there wasevidence of external trauma, such as recent scar tissue, abrasions, contusions, bruising,discoloration of the skin, or internal bleeding.168These injuries most commonly relatedto the face, limbs, and back. While the medical files examined by Human Rights Watchdid not contain information relating to the date of arrest of the detainees in question, inhalf of the cases (five in all), the medical examiners assessed the injuries as havingoccurred within a range of twenty-four hours to two weeks prior to the medicalexamination taking place.169Medical records for female detainees covering the sameperiod beginning June to mid-September 2004 indicated three referrals to the Medico-Legal Institute.170In two of the cases, the medical reports concluded that there wasevidence of recent external trauma in the form of contusions and bruising. The Officeof the Undersecretary for Intelligence Affairs at the Interior Ministry referred one ofthese cases in which the medical examiners assessed the injuries as having occurred someseven to ten days prior to the medical examination.171For the earlier period of January to March 2004, Iraqi authorities referred a total ofeighteen cases,172five of which involved detainees held at the Major Crimes Directorate

The breakdown per month was as follows: June – 11; July – 4; August – 1. There were no cases registeredfor the period September 1 through 14.The police stations from which the fourteen detainees were referred were the following: al-Bayya’, al-Rashad, al-Dora, Bab al-Shaikh, Hay al-‘Amel, Baghdad al-Jadida, Abu Ghraib, al-Sha’ab and al-KarkhJuveniles Police Directorate. One of the cases connected to the Major Crimes Directorate was a referral fromthe Money Laundering Unit, and the other was on the basis of an order from an investigative judge at theCentral Criminal Court.For the remaining six cases, the medical reports concluded that in four of them, there was no evidence ofexternal trauma, and in a fifth case, that the scarred tissue was “old.” The sixth case involved a child referredfor medical examination to verify allegations of sodomy, though it was unclear from the records whether theallegations related to a co-detainee or to a police official. In this case, the medical report concluded thatsodomy could not be ruled out as having occurred, although there was no visible external evidence to thateffect. The doctors estimated the boy’s age to be between sixteen and seventeen.In the remaining five cases, the injuries were assessed as having occurred within a range of two weeks totwo months (in one case the range given was two to four months) prior to the medical examination .170171169168167

and the remainder at various police stations.173Medical examiners found evidence ofrecent injuries, including scarring, abrasions, and contusions in eight of them, andconcluded that the injuries sustained in six of them had occurred within a range of twoto fourteen days prior to the medical examinations.174The lack of any markeddifferences in the number and types of cases involving males detainees referred to theMedico-Legal Institute during the two periods in question accorded with what mostinvestigative judges had told Human Rights Watch. They concurred that since July 1,2004, the level and nature of allegations of abuse by detainees had not alteredsignificantly. One judge, however, did point to an increased level of allegations bydetainees of electric shocks under interrogation, which he said police interrogatorsappeared to be increasingly using “since it leaves few traces except perhaps tiny burnmarks on the earlobes or other places.”175Human Rights Watch noted that although medical reports at the Medico-Legal Instituteincluded a description of the evidence of physical trauma, based on an eye examination,they also stated that it was not possible to identify the kinds of instruments likely to havecaused the injuries. Although investigative judges that Human Rights Watch spoke tosaid they relied fully on the institute’s assessments, one expressed the view that medicalstaff there were few in number and lacked the necessary means to carry out effective andtimely examinations. “The lack of resources also means that medical reports come backambiguous, such that it is unclear whether the injuries detected are in fact torture or self-inflicted.”176When asked about this, one forensic doctor at the Medico-Legal Institute said that “thereliability of a medical report depends on the speed with which the person concerned isreferred for examination.”177Only two of the letters of referral from the policecontained in the medical records examined by Human Rights Watch mentioned the dateon which investigative judges or judicial investigators had referred the detainees in

Three of the five cases emanating from the Major Crimes Directorate were connected to the Abduction andMurder Unit, the fourth to the Money Laundering Unit and the fifth to the Organized Crime Unit. The otherreferrals emanated from the following police stations: al-Jamila, Hay al-‘Amel, al-Dora, al-Quds, al-Ma’mun andal-Karkh Juveniles Police Directorate. In the latter case, an assessment of the age of the detainee determinedthat he was between nineteen and twenty years old.Human Rights Watch did not have the opportunity to examine records involving female detainees for thesame period.Human Rights Watch discussion with an investigative judge [name withheld by Human Rights Watch],Central Criminal Court, Baghdad, August 22, 2004.Human Rights Watch discussion with Zuhair al-Maliki, then chief investigative judge, Central Criminal Court,Baghdad, August 30, 2004.Human Rights Watch discussion with a forensic doctor [name withheld by Human Rights Watch], Medico-Legal Institute, Baghdad, September 14, 2004.177176175174

question for medical examination, making it difficult to estimate the time lag involved inimplementing these orders.178The forensic doctor told Human Rights Watch that thiswas often deliberate, and that there was on average a twenty-day delay between theissuance and implementation of a referral order, by which time much of the physicalevidence of torture will have disappeared. “Sometimes the detainees themselves tell uswhen they are brought in that there is no point in having a medical examination sincethey were tortured two months previously,” he added.179This statement was supportedby another staff member at the institute. The doctor told Human Rights Watch:The most common kind of cases we see here involve beatings withcables, pipes and sticks, causing injuries such as abrasions andcontusions, which disappear within a maximum period of some twenty-one days. Because of the delays by the police in implementing thedecisions of the courts, it makes it difficult if not impossible for us toidentify the tools used in torture, particularly as these types of injuriescould have been caused in any number of ways. Sometimes the policedeliberately cause delays. For example, they bring in detainees withoutthe required stamp on their left wrist and without their photographsbeing stamped. They know that we will have to reject these cases untilproper procedures are followed, so causing further delays before amedical examination takes place. But there are also other types oftorture that can be used, such as electric shocks, which leave no physicaltrace except for tiny burn marks on the skin and are not easilydetected.180Human Rights Watch’s examination of the medical archives showed that relative to themany such reports it had received and the number of cases it documented, the level ofreferrals to the Medico-Legal Institute for verification or otherwise of torture allegationswas very low.181Of the detainees that the organization had interviewed from JulyOne of the two cases involved the referral by a Central Criminal Court judge of a detainee held by the MajorCrimes Directorate in al-Rusafa. His records at the Medico-Legal Institute showed that the judge referred himfor a medical examination on July 8, 2004, but detaining officials did not implement the referral until July 17, tendays later. The medical examination was carried out on July 18, and in this instance the report stated that noevidence of external trauma could be found.Human Rights Watch discussion with a forensic doctor [name withheld by Human Rights Watch], Medico-Legal Institute, Baghdad, September 14, 2004.180181179178

through mid-September 2004, only one person appeared to have been referred formedical examination, despite the presence of visible external trauma in some of the casessuggesting torture or ill-treatment.182The practice of holding detainees for several weeks, and in some cases for severalmonths, before bringing them to court for the first time appears to have been a majorfactor contributing to the non-referral of alleged torture victims for medicalexamination. The problem is compounded by the fact that in many cases, policeapprehended the suspects without presenting them before a judge in the requisitetwenty-four hours. This practice is facilitated by the failure to obtain arrest warrants inthe first place, which meant that no judicial authority was aware of their detention.While the Central Criminal Court’s investigative judges are authorized to carry outinspection visits of the Major Crime Directorate’s detention facilities, in practice thisrarely happened. The judges cited current security conditions and a large caseload as theprime reasons for the failure to conduct these inspections.183Human Rights Watchsought to discuss this issue with the representative of the Public Prosecution to theCentral Criminal Court’s investigative court, who is also authorized to carry out suchinspections, but he declined to meet with the organization. Human Rights Watch is notaware of any steps taken by the Ministry of Interior’s inspector general to assess theextent to which the conduct of law enforcement personnel and those involved indetentions is in compliance with legislation currently in force, nor whether anycomplaints regarding the illegal detention or abuse of detainees have reached theInspector General’s Office.184A police official attached to the Major Crimes Directoratepreliminary examinations at hospitals are carried out by doctors on shift duty who were not specialists in thefield of forensic medicine, and therefore unqualified to give a reliable assessment. Referring cases there wouldonly cause “unnecessary delays.”182

In February 2004 the CPA authorized the establishment of an Office of Inspector General within each IraqiMinistry, headed by an Inspector General appointed for a five-year term (CPA/ORD/5 February 2004/57: IraqiInspectors General). Section 5 of Order 57 sets out the functions of the Inspector General, which includereceiving and assessing complaints of abuse of authority and forwarding these to the appropriate investigativeauthority; providing information and evidence regarding potentially criminal acts to appropriate law enforcementofficials; referring matters for further civil, criminal and administrative action to appropriate administrative andprosecutorial agencies; and cooperating fully in assisting the work of law enforcement agencies, investigatorsand courts. Section 6 grants the Inspector General full and unrestricted access to the ministry’s records, thepower to subpoena witnesses, and the authority to require a Ministry’s employees to report to the Office ofInspector General information regarding fraud, waste, abuse, corruption, and illegal acts. Section 9 requires theinspector general to “report the findings and recommendations of the Office’s work to the respective minister, toappropriate elected and appointed leadership, and, except for law enforcement sensitive or confidentialinformation, to the public.” At this writing, the Ministry of Interior’s inspector general was Major General Hassanal-Saray.

told Human Rights Watch that within the Ministry’s Office of Inspector General, a bodyknown as the Interior Security Forces Inspection Commission (Hay’atTaftish Qiwa Amnal-Dakhiliyya)is tasked, among other things, with examining relevant records to ensurethat detentions are authorized by the judicial authorities, but that “in practice no onecomes to verify this”.185Torture most commonly takes place during the immediate period following arrest, whendetainees are held incommunicado while undergoing interrogation, and are at their mostvulnerable. By the time they are brought before an investigative judge, much if not all ofthe physical evidence of torture will have disappeared. At that point, unless physicalinjuries are still visible, investigative judges see little purpose in ordering a referral to theMedico-Legal Institute even if the detainees have alleged that police extracted theirstatements or confessions under duress. In the absence of physical evidence, it isunlikely that the judges will initiate a criminal investigation into the conduct of theoffending officials. They can initiate legal proceedings against police officials for failuresor delays in the implementation of orders issued by the judicial authorities,186such as anorder to refer a detainee for medical examination, which carries a lesser penalty than thecrime of torture under the Penal Code.187While investigative judges have initiatedproceedings against police officials for delays in implementing court orders, HumanRights Watch did not have information on the status of these cases at this writing.In other instances, detainees themselves requested that they not be referred for medicalexamination, fearing that this would prolong their pre-trial detention and delay an earlierresolution of their cases. Several investigative judges told Human Rights Watch thatthey would generally comply with such requests. Other detainees feared theconsequences of talking about any torture that they may have endured before coming tocourt. Among those interviewed by Human Rights Watch, several said that policeofficials threatened that they would receive the same treatment if they stated before thejudge that they had been ill-treated or tortured. Once the initial appearance before aninvestigative judge takes place, detainees are supposed to be taken to the Transfer Prisonunder the jurisdiction of the Iraqi Correctional Service. In practice, detainees held byone or another of the Ministry of Interior’s agencies often continued to be held by thatsame authority even after their appearance in court. In other words, they remained inthe custody of the same authority that was responsible for their torture or ill-treatment.

Investigative judges with whom Human Rights Watch discussed this problem said it wasnot so much a question of where the detainees were being held as opposed to whichofficials were responsible for investigating the alleged crimes. Several recommended thata separation of powers between the arresting and detaining authority on the one hand,and the investigative authority on the other, would afford better protection for detaineesfrom physical abuse. At the same time, they expressed doubt as to whether this could beachieved in the foreseeable future. One judge added:Only the judicial authorities should have the power to carry out criminalinvestigations, as is the case in some European countries. Only then willtorture stop, otherwise it will continue. It is one of the reasons whydefendants don’t talk when they come before me, although I can seethat they have been beaten up.188In instances where there are grounds to believe that police have tortured a detainee, theinvestigative judge will nevertheless proceed with the case provided other evidence isavailable indicative of the crime having been committed. According to one judge,detainees usually retract their initial confessions, saying that they gave them undertorture or threats. But unless there remains physical evidence of such abuse, the judgewill not initiate any criminal investigation against the alleged perpetrators. In such cases,a criminal investigation can only be initiated on the basis of a formal complaintsubmitted by the detainee concerned.189This is a rare occurrence, given that thedetainee remains for a time in the custody of the officials against whom he is submittinga complaint.190Human Rights Watch is not aware of the existence of any othermechanism whereby such complaints could be made. On the eve of sovereigntytransfer, the CPA authorized the appointment of an ombudsman for penal anddetention matters, allowing detainees to submit complaints relating to the behavior of adetaining authority. To Human Rights Watch’s knowledge, no such appointment hadbeen made at this writing.191

Human Rights Watch discussion an investigative judge [name withheld by Human Rights Watch], CentralCriminal Court, Baghdad, September 15, 2004.CPA/ORD/27 June 2004/98 (Iraqi Ombudsman for Penal and Detention Matters). The detaining authority,according to the Order, included Iraqi, Multinational Force or contracted personnel. The ombudsman,appointed by the prime minister on the recommendation of the minister of justice, is authorized to investigatecomplaints received after the entry into force of the Order (Section 4(1); to enter and inspect detention facilitiesand documents at any time “subject only to the limitation that the Multinational Force Commander or hisdelegate may deny access for reasons of imperative military necessity as an exceptional and temporarymeasure, or prevent the inspection of operationally classified documents” (Section 11); and to submit191

Human Rights Watch learned that, as of late October 2004, investigative judges hadinitiated investigations into the conduct of twenty police officers, some of them on thebasis of information that they had abused detainees in their custody. Of these, five orsix had resulted in the conviction of the police officers, who received non-custodialsentences, such as fines. The rest were still pending at this writing, and in their efforts tosecure compliance by the officers under investigation to obey court summons, judicialofficials said they had received little cooperation from ministry officials. One judge said:“On one occasion, I saw one of these police officers walking around in court. I went toinform the Internal Affairs officials, who keep an office at the court. I pointed out theofficer and asked why no action was being taken. They told me this would requireapproval from a higher authority”.192

X. Multinational Force advisers and reform effortsIn the context of the role of Multinational Force in contributing to the maintenance ofsecurity and stability in Iraq, under the terms of U.N. Security Council Resolution No.1546,193one of the responsibilities of the Multinational Force is to build the capability ofIraqi security forces, including the police. This was envisaged through a program ofrecruitment, training, mentoring, and monitoring, involving the assistance of a networkof both civilian and military international advisers working with the relevant IraqiMinistries, in particular Defense, Interior, and Justice. The United States governmenthas taken the lead in designing, funding and supervising this program. For the purposesof this report, Human Rights Watch spoke to six advisers assisting both the Ministries ofInterior and Justice on issues relating to policing and detentions. Two of them agreed tobe identified in this report.As of this writing, the areas of responsibility of senior advisers working with theMinistry of Interior at the level of policing include the following: planning and businessmanagement; counter-terrorism and operations; the Major Crimes Directorate (related to

appropriate recommendations to the prime minister, minister of justice, and the relevant head of the detainingauthority (Section 14(4). In cases of “serious misconduct,” such recommendations may include “dismissal,removal or punishment” of the detaining authority under investigation (Section 15). Additionally, Article 50 ofthe TAL, which provided for the establishment of a National Commission for Human Rights, stipulated that theCommission “shall include an Office of the Ombudsman to inquire into complaints. This office shall have thepower to investigate, on its own initiative or on the basis of a complaint submitted to it, any allegation that theconduct of the governmental authorities is arbitrary or contrary to law.” To Human Rights Watch’s knowledge,no steps were taken following sovereignty transfer to set up the National Commission for Human Rights.Human Rights Watch discussion with an investigative judge [name withheld by Human Rights Watch],Central Criminal Court, October 24, 2004.193192

crimes such as kidnapping, extortion, and money laundering); the Internal AffairsDirectorate; intelligence; and highway patrol and traffic. Below the senior policeadvisers is another layer of police advisers, some of whom work at the level of thedetention facilities rather than the ministry itself. Overseeing this network is the senioradviser to the Minister of Interior, covering policing and other matters.194In addition to specialized training, details of which are not covered in this report,international advisers working with the Iraqi Interim Government devised two basictraining programs for the Iraqi police, one for new recruits and another for members ofthe former Iraqi police force. Both are run by the Civilian Police Assistance TrainingTeam (CPATT), commanded until late September 2004 by British Brigadier GeneralAndrew Mackay. The Iraq Basic Training Curriculum for new recruits, an eight-weekprogram conducted at a purpose-built training academy in Jordan, consists of variouslessons divided into eight blocks and totaling 320 hours. Block 1 includes topics such asdemocratic policing principles, policing in a democratic society, human rights, and theprohibition against torture.195Block 2 includes topics on international law basics, pre-trial police behavior and potential violations of human rights, police ethics and values,and international standards for police use of force.196Block 3 includes such topics asinterviewing victims, witnesses and suspects and taking statements, as well as patrolprocedures and preliminary investigations.197Each of these topics is allocated betweentwo to four hours of the total curriculum. Block 4 focuses on Iraqi criminal law andprocedure (consisting of forty hours),198while blocks 5-8 deal with firearms and otherpractical training.Training for members of the former Iraqi police force, known as the Iraqi PoliceTransition Integration Program (IPTIP or TIP), consists of a three-week trainingprogram totaling 126 hours and run at the police academy in Baghdad.199Covering inshortened form many of the topics covered in the training for new recruits, its stated aimis “to change the philosophy, behaviors, actions, and activities of all Iraqi policeregardless of assignment,” through the introduction and improved acquisition ofSince the transfer of sovereignty, Steven W. Casteel, a U.S. national and former Assistant Administrator forIntelligence with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, has held this post.Other topics covered in Block 1 include the right to life, trafficking of persons, rights of children and juveniles,and freedom of assembly and association.Other topics covered in Block 2 include the right to liberty and security, gender issues, community policing,and policing in a multi-ethnic society,Other topics covered in Block 3 include women in law enforcement, domestic violence, report writing andmine awareness.This part of the curriculum covers an overview of the Iraqi criminal justice system, laws of arrest, search andseizure laws, role of the courts, and human rights.199198197196195194

“human rights knowledge, democratic policing principles, modern policing techniques,applicable Iraqi criminal laws and procedures, laws of arrest and detention, and firearmsproficiency.”200Brigadier General Mackay told Human Rights Watch that the training programs hadundergone some changes “to reflect current needs, and therefore now contain moreoperational policing due to counter-insurgency,” but that the “core human rightscontent” had been retained as part of the curriculum. He said that as of mid-September2004, some 27,000-28,000 “former regime police officers” had been trained, togetherwith 35,000-37,000 new recruits. Although the size of the Iraqi police force at the timewas estimated at 88,000, Brigadier General Mackay said that the “the difference betweenthe two [some 23,000-26,000] are untrained from our perspective.” A review of allpolice recruitment underway could result in making redundant 20,000-30,000 policeofficers previously recruited by the CPA and since deemed “unsuitable,” having failed“to subscribe to democratic or decent policing.”201The Minister of Interior was said tobe cooperating fully with the review.202By mid-September 2004, the Multinational Force deployed 465 international policeadvisers, most from the United States, in thirty-seven locations across Iraq, with theirnumbers set to rise to 500 in the near future. With regard to their role in the monitoringof possible abuse of detainees by police officers, Brigadier General Mackay told HumanRights Watch:It is their job to enter police stations and advise and check on detainees.They have discovered instances in police stations where detainees wereclearly beaten up. In such situations, they prepare a report, withphotographs where possible, and present it to the police chief todetermine why this is so. I have not personally kept records of wherethis has happened. These cases emerge depending on the reaction ofthe international police advisers where they feel strongly about it. Noone underestimates the difficulties we are facing, and the situation isexacerbated by a brutal insurgency campaign, which has to be beaten in“Iraqi Police Transition Integration Program (REVISED),” provided to Human Rights Watch by BrigadierGeneral Andrew Mackay, commander of CPATT, September 19, 2004. Brigadier General Mackay also madeavailable documents pertaining to human rights issues used by trainers in some of lessons covered in thecurriculum, and Human Rights Watch obtained similar documents on additional topics from other sources.SeeGethin Chamberlaine, “Critics warn plan to sack 30,000 Iraqi police will create enemies”,The Scotsman,August 23, 2004.Human Rights Watch discussion with Brigadier General Andrew Mackay, CPATT, Baghdad, September 19,2004.202201200

order to bring stability to the country. In this fight, the police are in thefrontlines.203Human Rights Watch believes that the system currently in place for the reporting ofpolice abuses remains woefully inadequate and is given low priority, judging by theapparent lack of follow-up and even knowledge of such abuses. Among the locationswhere international police advisers are deployed is the Major Crimes Directorate facilityin al-‘Amiriyya, where many of the allegations of torture or ill-treatment of detaineesreceived by Human Rights Watch emanated. Brigadier General Mackay told HumanRights Watch that none of the international police advisers “had alerted me to anyprisoner abuse” there. Yet one of investigative judges at the Central Criminal Court,who visited the al-‘Amiriyya facility on a number of occasions, said he had fully apprisedthe chief police adviser there of the detainee abuse taking place, but that the adviserapparently took no action.204With regard to torture allegations emanating from theCriminal Intelligence Directorate, Brigadier General Mackay said that to his knowledge,there were no advisers placed within the intelligence agencies. Human Rights Watchalso raised with him the issue of general conditions of detention in such facilities, givingas one of several examples the failure to provide food to the detainees, who were obligedto buy their own. “I won’t deny that this is occurring. Until we get proper security andstability to the country, we cannot tackle that issue,” he responded.205Two Iraqi police officials attached to the Major Crimes Directorate, to whom HumanRights Watch spoke on a confidential basis in August and September 2004, freelyadmitted that Iraqi police used torture to extract information from detainees underinterrogation. One said that until such time as adequate means for “normal criminalinvestigation” became available, including having a sufficient number of cells to holdsuspects in the same case separately so that they did not concoct a story together, torturewill continue to be used as the only sure means to obtain the necessary information fromdetainees. He commented that the presence of international police advisers had notchanged anything: “We were using these interrogation methods long before theAmericans came, and we will continue to use them long after the Americans aregone.”206

The second official cited an additional factor which, in his view, led to the torture ofdetainees. He told Human Rights Watch that investigating officers at the Major CrimesDirectorate were too few for the number of cases each had to handle. Within each ofthe directorate’s four main units, there were some ten police investigators, each of whichhad “at least twenty-five to thirty detainee cases to handle, in addition to a further 150unregistered cases.” As such, police investigators did not have the luxury to spend theamount of time involved in carrying out normal criminal investigation, and found itmore time-efficient to beat the information out of the detainees. The practice ofextracting information under duress was also alluded to by Brigadier General Mackay: “Iam aware that a lot of information is extracted through confessions, but it is difficult toassess how extensive that is.”207The Ministry of Justice’s Iraqi Correctional Service (ICS –Da’irat al-Islah al-‘Iraqiyya)conducts a physical examination of detainees who are transferred to facilities under itscontrol; this serves as a partial assessment of the extent to which Ministry of Interioragencies torture or abuse detainees before they are transferred. International advisersworking with the ICS told Human Rights Watch that they have “uncovered instanceswhere this has occurred.” If authorities followed procedures, then “once defendantsappear before the investigative judge, they must be turned over to the ICS immediately,but this does not happen.”208Human Rights Watch’s own research similarly showedthat defendants referred to the Central Criminal Court by the Ministry of Interior’sspecialized agencies frequently remained under their jurisdiction after their appearancebefore an investigative judge, increasing their vulnerability to further abuse should theyspeak out before the judge about their treatment in detention. Not infrequently,detainees who told Human Rights Watch they were tortured, and whose investigativehearings the organization attended, refrained from repeating the same allegations beforethe judge, even in cases where evidence of external trauma was still clearly visible.According to one adviser, once such detainees are transferred to the ICS, they undergo aphysical examination as a matter of procedure and a report is prepared, together withphotographs where relevant, detailing any identifiable injuries they may have sustainedprior to their arrival. He told Human Rights Watch that the ICS then sends such reportsto Ministry of Interior officials: “We don’t know what happens to these reports afterthat; it’s out of our hands.”209

David Hamilton, an international police adviser to the Ministry of Interior, said that partof the problem was the lack of effective monitoring of police behavior in the post-training phase:The ministry says prisoners will not be tortured, but this is Iraq and ithappens. Human rights should be an integral part of the training, andnew recruits do get human rights training, but only initially at theacademy, without further follow-up or monitoring. The problem is thatonce the new recruits are deployed to the police stations, the older onestell them “forget what you’ve learned, this is how we do things here.”You can’t simply say “don’t torture,” you have to provide an alternative,which includes training in good investigative skills.210Hamilton told Human Rights Watch that in an effort to improve and increase the levelof monitoring of police conduct and of detainee treatment, one of the ideas adviserswere considering was to start “an independent lay visitors’ scheme.” This would involve“a group of people selected to represent the community, who would carry outunannounced inspections of police stations, having permission to speak to the detaineesand to assess conditions in custody.” They would then report to the Ministry of Interioron their findings. Other ideas that he said should be considered included setting up alegal aid system to improve detainees’ access to defense counsel, although he expressedsome doubt as to whether “this government is prepared to pay for lawyers to defenddangerous criminals.” Hamilton advocated an increased presence of internationalmonitors at police stations. He also stressed the necessity for a national policing planthat would encompass tackling issues such as police corruption in order to increasepublic confidence in the system; establishing a promotion system for the police that isboth transparent and based on performance; and a selection system for training coursesbased on an assessment of what the candidates “could bring back to policing rather thanwho they knew.”211

Human Rights Watch discussion with David Hamilton, senior police adviser to the Ministry of Interior onplanning and business management, Baghdad, September 7, 2004. Hamilton said that scene-of-crime officertraining was already taking place at thirty-five locations nationwide, including training in methods for gatheringphysical evidence for scientific analysis. However, until such time as effective laboratory facilities becomeavailable, the usefulness of such training remains limited: “There are facilities available to police investigatorsfor analysis of blood type but not subtype, and none for DNA analysis or fiber matching.” An experiment wasunderway with a “model police station equipped to Western standards,” but for the time being this was onlywithin the Green Zone, he added.211

Other international advisers working closely with the Ministry of Interior on policingand other matters sought to explain the difficulties of reorganizing, training, andequipping a police force, particularly under current security conditions in Iraq,difficulties which Human Rights Watch recognizes. One of them told the organization:We are trying to turn the Iraqi police into a Western style police forcewhile at the same time trying not to raise people’s expectations toomuch. They are neither properly trained nor equipped, and we have tocontend with the negative way in which the police was regarded beforethe war. Now the police are expected to be engaged in a guerilla war,something which would not be expected of them anywhere in theworld.212The adviser also referred to problems related to police recruitment and training inheritedfrom the CPA by current advisers to the Ministry of Interior: “We are trying to weedout the folks who are unsuitable, going for quality rather than quantity and with bettervetting procedures.” He confirmed that the Ministry of Interior was currently reviewingpast police recruitment, and that in the course of the review, it discovered that some ofthe police recruited under the CPA were illiterate, while others had no basic policingskills. “There was even an instance where the CPA hired an entire tribe,” he said, inorder to get more police onto the streets.213Another adviser with the ministry toldHuman Rights Watch that a four-person committee within the ministry, involvingrepresentatives of the police, Internal Affairs, finance and administration, has beenholding “four-hour meetings three times a week for the last three months to set up the[review] system.” The aim was to establish criteria for current police officers to “re-qualify” for their posts, taking into account factors as wide-ranging as physical fitness toallegations of corruption, as well as to define “the baseline for future recruitment.” Hesaid four international advisers were assisting the review committee in its work, but in“an advisory capacity only and without decision-making powers.”214Both advisers stressed that the Ministry of Interior was taking the issue of policecorruption seriously and making efforts to investigate all such allegations.215They saidHuman Rights Watch discussion with an adviser to the Ministry of Interior [name withheld by Human RightsWatch], Baghdad, September 21, 2004.213214212

the Internal Affairs Directorate, responsible for investigating police conduct andmalpractice, had investigated some forty-two cases with the assistance of “two coalitionmentors.”216Human Rights Watch was told that these were “mostly corruption cases.”When asked whether they had investigated any allegations of abuse of detainees bypolice officers, one adviser said he was not aware of such cases but would makeenquiries. During these discussions, the advisers assured the organization that both theyand Ministry officials were making efforts to monitor police behavior, giving theexample of the introduction of a thirty-point code of conduct introduced in late May orearly June 2004, and which was “signed by some police officers.”217They told HumanRights Watch that they would make the code of conduct available to it. At this writing,they had provided the organization neither the code of conduct nor informationregarding any detainee abuse investigations that may have taken place.When Human Rights Watch gave examples of the instances of torture and ill-treatmentit had recorded with regard to detainees held at the Major Crimes Directorate facility inal-‘Amiriyya, one adviser replied that international advisers at the detention facility“don’t meet with the detainees, and therefore don’t see any abuse.” Detaineesinterviewed by Human Rights Watch confirmed the absence of direct contact betweenthem and advisers. When asked, none said they had had any such contact, which theorganization believes raises questions about the effectiveness of the role of advisersaiming, according to their own statements, to bring law enforcement in Iraq up tostandards that comply with international human rights protections. The adviser toldHuman Rights Watch that the current focus is on “building the capability andeffectiveness of the police, and we are increasing that now.” In discussing the two casesof mass arrests highlighted in this report (the al-Bataween and the al-Kifah Street raids –see Section VII), he said:What MOI is aiming to do is to make sure that they are able to pinpointwhere these people [the suspects] live, and to avoid mass roundups. Wetry to provide GPS coordinates for their homes. But trying to collectevidence beforehand – this is still a luxury for us. We will continue topress the MOI.218When asked whether he was aware that the majority of the suspects police arrested inthe al-Kifah Street and al-Bataween raids and referred to court were eventually released216217

due to insufficient evidence, thereby calling into question the effectiveness of the policein these two instances, the adviser said he had not followed up on the cases after arrestand was not aware that that had been the outcome. When asked about Ministry ofInterior agencies – such as the Criminal Intelligence Directorate – acting outside theirareas of competence by carrying out arrests, he said: “As far as I know, CriminalIntelligence has no arresting or detaining powers.”219Perhaps more telling of the priority being given to portraying the Iraqi government astaking firm and decisive action on violent crime at the expense of protecting basichuman rights and even effective policing are remarks made by the Ministry of Interior’ssenior international adviser, Steven Casteel. When interviewed on police operations fortheBoston Globein July 2004, he said:There’s always a pendulum between freedom and security, and in MiddleEastern culture they’ve always allowed that pendulum to swing moretowards security. The Iraqi people are looking for this government totake a strong stance … Obviously, we support human rights. And theIraqi police understand they’re not supposed to do anything outside theIraqi legal framework. But that legal framework is not the US legalframework.220TheBoston Globejournalist also interviewed officials on the al-Bataween raid in whichU.S. soldiers had intervened to stop the abuse of suspects by the Iraqi police:Interior Ministry officials were outraged by what they saw as a violationof their sovereignty. They called in Casteel, who said he spent three orfour hours to smooth out the problem. In the end, the MPs agreed thatthe Iraqis were in charge of the prisoners. “Some soldiers think they’restill the occupation forces and behave that way,” Interior Ministryspokesman Sabah al-Anbaqi said. But at the Interior Ministry, BrigadierGeneral Hussein Ali Kamal said the incident built morale because Iraqicontrol had prevailed.221

For his part, Casteel cited the al-Bataween raid as “an example of US-Iraqi cooperation,in which US troops shared satellite images of the neighborhood and backed up thepolice with Humvees.” Both he and an Iraqi police official said that:Interior Ministry officials emphasized human rights and ethics as theyprepared more than eighty agents to take part. They brought twenty-five internal affairs police with them to monitor the operation. Casteelsaid only one theft occurred of a case of beer and that the policemanwho stole it is being disciplined.222During the course of its research for this report, Human Rights Watch was hard pressedto find evidence suggesting that Iraqi officials had conducted serious investigations intothe abuse of detainees by the police, taken adequate disciplinary action or criminalproceedings against those found guilty of such abuse, or appropriately conveyed thatmessage to act as a deterrent for others.

AppendixThe following are extracts from the accounts of five detainees whom Human RightsWatch interviewed at the al-Karrada Criminal Court in Baghdad in September andOctober 2004. They were among fifteen detainees interviewed upon their referral onvarious criminal charges, including theft and murder, and were in court for theirinvestigative hearing or trial. All were being held at police stations in Baghdad, includingal-Sa’doun, al-Masbah, Baghdad al-Jadida, Balat al-Shudada’, and al-Muthanna. Theiraccounts regarding treatment in detention at the hands of the Iraqi police were largelyconsistent with those obtained by Human Rights Watch from detainees held in thecustody of the Ministry of Interior’s specialized police agencies and referred to theCentral Criminal Court.

Case A‘Ali Bargouth ‘Alwan: a thirty-year-old man living in the neighborhood of al-Saydiyya inBaghdad, employed as a guard in a car showroom. He told Human Rights Watch thatthe police arrested him in June 2004, [he could not remember the exact day], uponfinding a hand grenade in his possession. He said he had bought it for 1,500 dinarsfrom a group of men outside a restaurant in al-Bataween, who were insistent and said itwas a cheap deal:A few minutes later a car drew up, and four policemen got out afterseeing the hand grenade in my hand. They bound my hands behind myback with metal handcuffs, blindfolded me with a piece of cloth andbegan hitting me in front of passers-by. They punched me and kickedme and hit me with the butts of their rifles on my head and all over mybody. While in the car on the way to the police station, one of themsaid if I gave him 50,000 dinars he would let me go before reaching thestation, but I refused.At al-Sa’doun police station, I was taken up to the interrogating officer’sroom. They removed the blindfold but left me handcuffed. There weresix of them altogether. The first lieutenant started asking me questionsas the others punched me, kicked me and used cables and pipes on myback and head. One of them said I must say that the grenade was mineand reveal where I had got it from. They continued beating me, withinsults and verbal abuse, which lasted until two o’clock in the morningwith a few minutes’ break in between. At the end of the interrogation

session they asked me to sign a statement, although I can neither readnor write, but no one read it out to me and I was obliged to sign it.I was not allowed to contact my family to let them know I was detained,so no one visited me. When I first got to the police station, there wereabout sixty or seventy people held there. There was nowhere for me tosleep or rest, so I slept on the floor of the toilet. The police gave us nofood, and I ate from the food that the families of other detaineesbrought them. There were no beds, and everyone had to sleep on theirside because there was no room.A week later I was brought before the investigative judge at the court inal-Karrada. I had no lawyer and the court did not appoint one for mefor the hearing. I told the judge I was beaten while being questioned atthe police station, but he did not respond to what I said. He just askedme whether I had anything to add, and said my case would be referredto the misdemeanors court.223‘Ali told Human Rights Watch that twenty days after his arrest, the police transferredhim to Abu Ghraib Prison. His case was later referred to the felony court, and on theday the organization met him, his trial was adjourned because the judge was absent.

Case BTahsin Dar’am Balasem: a twenty-five-old man from the governorate of al-‘Amara livingand working in Baghdad, who told Human Rights Watch he belonged to the BadrOrganization.224On November 6, 2003, a U.S. military patrol arrested him and hisbrother on the 7 April Bridge in Baghdad and took them to al-Muthanna police stationin the district of al-Zayyouna. Tahsin said he was attempting to find and apprehend anindividual whom he believed was responsible for killing his maternal cousin:As soon as we entered the police station the Iraqi police blindfolded meand tied my hands behind my back, and took me into the interrogation

room. The interrogating officer began questioning me and told me toconfess to having committed robberies and abductions. I denied this.So they started beating me with cables. They also used electric shocksby tying wires to my ears and to my penis. After that I confessed. Thenext day I was taken before the investigative judge, and I denied thecharges, saying I had confessed under torture. He did not refer me tothe Medico-Legal [Institute] even though I showed him my body andthe traces of torture. I told the judge I was not a criminal, and that I hadcome to resolve a tribal case. I said someone had killed my maternalcousin and I wanted revenge. So they opened another case against me,but did not drop the first charges.After I was taken back to al-Muthanna police station, the police hit meagain and used electric shocks by applying it to my ears and penis. Thetorture lasted about four hours. They asked why I had denied the chargesbefore the judge, and why I had said my case was of a tribal kind. Tendays later they brought a group of people whose car had been stolen, andone of them identified me as the person who stole it. So they openedanother case against me. But even though they tortured me again foranother two hours to confess to this crime, I did not confess either tothem or before the investigative judge. After a long time I was brought tocriminal court in al-Karrada and was acquitted of this last charge, but I amstill in prison because of the other two charges.225

Case CNasir Ghani Muhsin: a twenty-one-year old guard employed by the Ministry of Health,whom the police arrested on August 12, 2004, in the al-Bab al-Sharqi district ofBaghdad. He told Human Rights Watch that on that day, a gang robbed him in thestreet, stealing his watch, a bag containing clothes, and U.S. $120. He said he asked apasserby for 500 dinars to enable him to get home, and that the passerby pointed to apolice car nearby and said they may be able to help him:I went towards the car, and the man whom I had asked for money cameup behind me. When we got there, the man accused me of having triedto rob him. The two policemen were wearing ordinary police uniforms,but they were not armed and did not wear badges proving that they were225

from the police. Their car was a black BMW. After they heard thecomplaint against me, they started hitting me with a wooden stick infront of passersby, then they put me in the boot of the car and took meto al-Sa’doun police station. It was a Thursday, at about one o’clock inthe afternoon.As soon as I got to the police station, they took me up to the secondfloor. The interrogating officer asked me what my case was, and I toldhim I didn’t know. All I had done was to ask someone for 500 dinars,who then made a complaint against me to the police. The officerordered that I be beaten in order to tell the truth, so one of the otherspunched me in the back and stomach, on my head and face. He hit meon the mouth with the butt of his rifle, which cause my lips to bleed.After that, I told them I was guilty and had tried to rob the man whomade the complaint. I had been tortured for a few minutes, but as soonas I confessed the torture stopped. The officer took down my statementand asked me to sign it, which I did.After that they took me to the detention cell at the station. There weretwenty of us in the room. The police did not give us any food or water.We drank water from the toilet, and shared the food that some of thedetainees received from their families. They did not allow me to contactmy family to tell them I was at al-Sa’doun police station, but five dayslater I got word to them after one of the detainees was released. I gavehim my family’s address and asked him to contact them.On August 20 they brought me before the investigative judge at al-Karrada. There was another man in the room. I didn’t know whetherhe was a defense lawyer appointed by the court for me, since he didn’tspeak to me at all. He just told the judge that the complainant had notturned up and his address was unknown. So the judge postponed thehearing until the complainant was found. I was taken back to the policestation for another week, then to theTasfirat[Transfer Prison] for amonth, and then to Abu Ghraib for almost two weeks. Today I wasacquitted and the complainant never turned up, but I have anothercharge pending against me, relating to the possession of an unlicensed

Case DRa’ed Muhammad ‘Atiyya ‘Abbas al-Budairi: a thirty-year-old lorry driver living andworking in Baghdad, who the police accused of stealing a car and an amount of goldfrom the Central Bank of Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the SaddamHussein government.227He told Human Rights Watch that the police arrested him andhis brother Ra’ad on March 24, 2004, at their home in the Hay al-Atibba’ neighborhoodof Baghdad, at around seven o’clock in the morning. Upon searching their home, hesaid police removed gold jewelry from his mother’s bedroom and took two cars parkedin the garage, one of which he said belonged to his brother’s Lebanese business partner.They took them to Balat al-Shuhada’ police station in the district of al-Dora:Upon reaching the police station they put me and my brother in thedetention cell and untied our hands. Half an hour later I wassummoned for interrogation. They tied my hands behind my back withmetal handcuffs. Four of them questioned me, and told me to confessto having stolen the two cars. They also accused me of having stolenthe gold, and told me to confess to that. I said I had nothing to do withit. Two of them held me from behind, and Lieutenant Colonel [namewithheld] used a wooden stick to beat me on the soles of my feet. Healso hit me on my back and other parts of my body, all the while tellingme to confess to having stolen the cars and the gold. This continued,with insults and foul language, for a whole hour.After that they took me back to the cell and immediately summoned mybrother. He was interrogated in the same way, with torture and

beatings. They did not allow us family visits, and did not give us anyfood. Other detainees bought food by giving the police money to buy itfor them, and shared it with us. We drank water from the tap in thetoilet, which we also used to wash ourselves. When we first arrived atBalat al-Shuhada’ police station, there were thirty-five detainees. Therewere bunk beds for everyone, but after a while they were taken away andwe had to sleep on the floor.The interrogation continued for about a week. Each time they took meor my brother and tortured us for an hour or so, usually at aroundmidday. Then a lawyer arrived and said my parents had engaged him todefend us. We talked for ten minutes. The next day they referred meand my brother to the judicial investigator at the police station. Thetorture stopped and they allowed us family visits.228According to Ra’ed’s account, two and half months later detaining officials brought himand his brother before an investigative judge at al-Bayya’ criminal court, who told themthat the car theft charge would be dropped. Three days later they were transferred toBab al-Shaikh police station, where they spent seventeen days without questioning. Thepolice subsequently moved them to the Transfer Prison to await their court appearanceon charges of having stolen gold from the Central Bank of Iraq. Ra’ed told HumanRights Watch that the police had brought him to al-Karrada criminal court by mistake,caused by the similarity between his name and that of another detainee. He said theywere taking him back to the Transfer Prison, and wondered what was to become of himand his brother.

Case EHamid Farhan Salman: a thirty-five-year-old casual laborer living in the district of al-Za’faraniyya in Baghdad, who the police arrested on March 15, 2004, on a murdercharge. He told Human Rights Watch:A sharp dispute broke out between me and a lorry driver in traffic, sowe started firing at each other with our guns, as a result of which apasserby was killed. At the same time, a group of people from thenearby headquarters of the Da’wa Party also started firing, as well as anumber of policemen. The group from the Da’wa Party captured theHuman Rights Watch interview with Ra’ed Muhammad ‘Atiyya ‘Abbas al-Budairi, al-Karrada Criminal Court,Baghdad, October 11, 2004.228

lorry driver and handed him over to al-Za’faraniyya police station, and Iran away. Half an hour later I went to the police station to turn myselfin. It was about 7.30 in the evening.I confessed to my part in the dispute, and wasn’t certain whether anyonehad been killed. I was arrested immediately, and fifteen minutes laterthey took me and the lorry driver to the interrogating officer’s room.They questioned us without hitting us. The lorry driver denied knowingme or that he was involved in a dispute with me, which was not true. Aweek later, I was brought before the investigative judge. I didn’t have alawyer, so the court appointed one for me, but he didn’t say a word tome and I never saw him again after that. I returned to al-Za’faraniyyapolice station, and a week later I was interrogated again.I was blindfolded, and my hands were tied behind my back. Thelieutenant colonel accused me of having bribed the investigating officerin my case, and started hitting me with a cable on my back to make meconfess. This continued for about ten minutes. Then two of them heldme back, and I was punched all over the body. The following day Imade a complaint against the interrogating officer to the head of thepolice station, and the officer was transferred to another station. Istayed there for about a month and a half, and then they transferred meand the lorry driver to al-Masbah police station. The police there treatedus well, but they never gave us food. My family visited me everyThursday, and on the other days the police allowed them to visit afterthree o’clock in the afternoon for ten minutes each time, in exchange fora sum of money. After about two months, the lorry driver was releasedon bail, and two weeks later I was moved to theTasfirat[TransferPrison]. The following day I was sent to Abu Ghraib.229Hamid described the treatment at Abu Ghraib as good. He said he received three mealsa day, had family visits once a week, was allowed to go outdoors for exercise withoutchains once every two weeks, and was seen by the ICRC. At the time of the interview,he was still being held in Abu Ghraib. He told Human Rights Watch that he hadresolved the case with the family of the passerby who was killed in the traditional tribalmanner [fasl‘asha’iri].In exchange for a payment of five million dinars, the family hadagreed to drop the murder charge against him. Despite that, he said, he had not beenHuman Rights Watch interview with Hamid Farhan Salman, al-Karrada Criminal Court, Baghdad, October13, 2004.229

AcknowledgementsThis report was researched and written by Hania Mufti, Regional Director of the MiddleEast and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch. Sarah Leah Whitson, executivedirector of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Division, edited thereport. Widney Brown, deputy program director of Human Rights Watch, and JamesRoss, senior legal adviser to Human Rights Watch, reviewed the report. Leila Hull,associate for the Middle East and North Africa division, Veronica Matushaj, PhotoEditor & Associate Director, Creative Services, and Andrea Holley, manager of outreachand publications, prepared this report for production. Additional production assistancewas provided by Fitzroy Hepkins, mail manager, and Jagdish Parikh, onlinecommunications content coordinator.Human Rights Watch wishes to acknowledge the cooperation of numerous individualsin Baghdad and al-Najaf who provided additional assistance and logistical support, butwho cannot be named since they remain in Iraq. For those outside Iraq, we extend ourthanks to Mike Francis ofThe Oregonian,and Captain Jarrell Southall of the OregonArmy National Guard. We also appreciate the cooperation we received from Iraqipolice, judicial and medical personnel, and advisers with the Multinational Force-Iraq, ingathering information for this report.Human Rights Watch would also like to thank the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the JohnD. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Stichting Vluchteling, NOVIB, the J.M.Kaplan Fund, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Oak Foundation, the RuthMcLean Bowman Bowers Foundation, ACT Netherlands, a joint project of Kerkinactieand ICCO, and the many individuals who contributed to Human Rights Watch’s Iraqemergency fund.