Iraqis say U.S. rehired Saddam-era torturers as "new" police force [View All]

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http://www.unknownnews.org/0507120708sameoldsameold.html
by James Hider, The Times of London

July 8, 2005

Iraqi security forces, set up by U.S. and British troops, tortured detainees by pulling out their fingernails, burning them with hot irons or giving them electric shocks, Iraqi officials claimed.

Cases had also been recorded of prisoners being tied up and beaten to death.

In their haste to put police on the streets to counter the brutal insurgency, Iraqi and U.S. authorities had enlisted men trained under Saddam Hussein's regime and versed in torture and abuse, the officials told The Times.

...

The Human Rights Ministry official in charge of monitoring Iraq's prisons, Saad Sultan, said commandos were responsible for random arrests, hanging people from ceilings and beating them, attaching electrodes to ears, hands, feet and genitals, and holding hot irons to flesh.

The article mentions that the Interior Ministry is made up mostly of former army officers and special forces soldiers drawn from the ranks of Saddam's dissolved army.