Rights Group Tells of Iraqi Torture, Baby Deaths

Iraqi forces that invaded and occupied Kuwait tortured and killed hundreds of victims, even leaving infants to die, according to a report issued Tuesday by Amnesty International.

The 82-page document was the first comprehensive report by the London-based human rights organization on the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait. It was based on interviews with more than 100 people, mainly Kuwaitis who fled to Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries, and was delivered to the U.N. Security Council in New York.

Citing the abuses, it charged that some 300 premature babies were left to die when Iraqi troops stole incubators from hospitals in Kuwait in order to ship them back to Iraq.

“Widespread abuses of human rights have been perpetrated by Iraqi forces since the invasion of Kuwait on Aug. 2,” Amnesty International said.

“These include arbitrary arrest and detention without trial of thousands of civilians and military personnel, the widespread torture of such persons in custody, the imposition of the death penalty and the extrajudicial execution of hundreds of unarmed civilians, including children.”

A spokesman for the Iraqi Embassy in London said Tuesday, “We deny all these fabrications.”

According to the report, most of the abuses took place in the first three months of the invasion, when Kuwaitis resisted their attackers and were brutally put down.

The forms of torture against civilians listed by the report included beatings with metal rods, whips, hoses, canes; breaking of limbs; extracting fingernails and toenails, cutting off ears and tongues, gouging eyes, castration and rape of women and young men.

The document’s authors interviewed victims in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Iran and Britain.

Some of those interviewed were doctors and nurses who confirmed reports of the infant deaths, describing how about 300 babies were taken from incubators and left to expire on cold floors.

“We heard rumors of these deaths as early as August, but only recently has there been substantial information on the extent of the killings,” the report said.

The document reported that several hundred Kuwaitis, some as young as 13, were killed by the troops and thousands more detained.

“Time and again, we were told that the most common way soldiers killed people was to take the victim to his family’s doorstep, have his relatives identify him and then shoot him in the back of the head,” the investigators reported.

Kuwaitis were summarily killed because they resisted the Iraqi takeover, continued to carry Kuwaiti currency or would not pledge allegiance to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Others were killed while trying to flee Kuwait for Saudi Arabia, the report said.