Report on Iraqi Abuses Is Met With Skepticism

In a report whose timing was questioned by human rights advocates, the British government on Monday accused Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s regime of systematic executions, torture, rape and other abuses of its own people.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the dossier was intended “to remind the world that the abuses of the Iraqi regime extend far beyond its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.”

Although nongovernmental watchdog groups had no quarrel with the content of the 23-page report, they were skeptical about the motives behind its release. The report, essentially a review of well-documented human rights horrors in Iraq, was based on research by human rights advocates and information gathered by intelligence agencies.

“We don’t want to be used as an excuse to go to war,” said Kamal Samari of Amnesty International.

With Hussein facing a Sunday deadline to detail any weapons programs or risk a U.S.-led attack, the Foreign Office appeared intent on making the case for military intervention, said Hania Mufti, London director of the Middle East division of Human Rights Watch.

“It looks strategic, coming a few days before Iraq’s deadline,” Mufti said. “Plus the fact that the dossier doesn’t contain any new information.”

British diplomats argued that there is a direct link between the campaign to disarm Iraq and the regime’s bloody history. They pointed out that Hussein has the ignoble distinction of having used poison gas to kill 5,000 of his people during the Halabja massacre in Kurdistan in 1988.

The dimensions of the brutality reinforce the need to rid Iraq of any weapons of mass destruction, a British official said.

“The historical record showed the regime had used such weapons against its own people,” said one official. “If they were still in existence, Saddam Hussein would likely use them again.”

At a Foreign Office briefing, Hussein Shahristani, former chief scientist of the Iraqi Atomic Energy Organization, detailed his torments during more than a decade in solitary confinement. The Foreign Office said Shahristani was arrested in 1979 for refusing to put chemical and biological laboratories to military use and was held until he escaped Iraq during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

“I was fortunate,” Shahristani said. “They only tortured me for 23 days and nights, continuously, by hanging me from my hands tied at the back and using high voltage on sensitive parts of my body.”

Despite his denunciation of the Iraqi regime, the scientist said he had misgivings about the British policy toward Iraq, especially the prospect of an invasion.

“Particularly, I’m concerned that weapons of mass destruction, the chemical weapons in particular, could be used again by the regime against the people if they show any opposition or uprising,” he said.

It will be hard to dismantle Hussein’s chemical and biological weapons programs because they have been deployed in small mobile units and are continuously on the move, he said.

The Foreign Office’s report, which Shahristani called “better late than never,” is a catalog of suffering. It describes a relatively recent addition to the arsenal of repression: Starting in 2000, the Hussein regime has cut off tongues of some Iraqis suspected of making insulting remarks about the president and his family, according to the dossier.

Other flagrant cases described in the document: the arbitrary executions of about 2,500 prisoners in a “prison cleansing campaign”; public beheadings of women suspected of prostitution or anti-government activity; and the torture of a husband and wife suspected of contacting opposition groups.

“Iraqi TV has broadcast pictures of these punishments as a warning to others,” the dossier says.

Pressed in a British television interview about the timing of the report’s release, a senior diplomat said the Foreign Office writes yearly reports about countries accused of human rights violations.

“We have got a particular problem in relation to Iraq because, of course, there is a link between weapons of mass destruction and Iraq and human rights abuses there,” said Mike O’Brien, Foreign Office minister on Iraq.

“We’ve got the inspectors in; we’ve got a unanimous U.N. resolution. It must be backed by the threat of force if Saddam breaches international law, but our objective at the moment is to remove the weapons of mass destruction without having to use military force if we can do that.”