30,000 Prisoners Held Without Trial in Iraq-Torture in Iraq Continues, Unabated [View All]

[Panaconda]

Torture in Iraq Continues, Unabated

Posted on Sep 21, 2010

By Amy Goodman

Combat operations in Iraq are over, if you believe President Barack Obama’s rhetoric. But torture in Iraq’s prisons, first exposed during the Abu Ghraib scandal, is thriving, increasingly distant from any scrutiny or accountability. After arresting tens of thousands of Iraqis, often without charge, and holding many for years without trial, the United States has handed over control of Iraqi prisons, and 10,000 prisoners, to the Iraqi government. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

After landing in London late Saturday night, we traveled to the small suburb of Kilburn to speak with Rabiha al-Qassab, an Iraqi refugee who was granted political asylum in Britain after her brother was executed by Saddam Hussein. Her husband, 68-year-old Ramze Shihab Ahmed, was a general in the Iraqi army under Saddam, fought in the Iran-Iraq War and was part of a failed plot to overthrow the Iraqi dictator. The couple was living peacefully for years in London, until September 2009.

It was then that Ramze Ahmed learned his son, Omar, had been arrested in Mosul, Iraq. Ahmed returned to Iraq to find him and was arrested himself.

For months, Rabiha didn’t know what had become of her husband. Then, on March 28, her cell phone rang. "I don’t know the voice," she told me.

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http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/torture_in_iraq_continues_unabated_20100921/

"New Order, Same Abuses": Amnesty Condemns Iraq for Holding 30,000 Prisoners Without Trial
Iraqdetainees-web

Amnesty International is condemning Iraq for holding an estimated 30,000 prisoners without trial, including 10,000 prisoners who were recently transferred from US custody. In a new report, Amnesty documents that Iraqi prisoners are being arbitrarily detained and often beaten to obtain forced confessions.

AMY GOODMAN: Amnesty International has released a new report that finds more than 30,000 prisoners are being held in Iraq without charge, including 10,000 prisoners who were recently transferred from US custody. Amnesty’s report is called "New Order, Same Abuses: Unlawful Detentions and Torture in Iraq."

Malcolm Smart is the director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North African program. He joins us here in London.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Malcolm.

MALCOLM SMART: Thank you, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you summarize for us this case, this extremely painful case of Ramze Ahmed?

MALCOLM SMART: Well, his case, unfortunately, is all too typical of many that we hear about. In this case, his wife is here in the UK and is more able to make public her concerns and express the anguish that she and other members of the family are going through. But his case is all too familiar of situations where people are detained, taken away, sometimes in the dead of night. Nobody knows where they’ve gone. Their families don’t hear about them maybe for several months, in this case for over four months. Then they surface. So they disappear, and then they—if they surface, often—

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http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/20/new_order_same_abuses_amnesty_condemns