Abuse of Prisoners Still Seen in Iraq, Report Says
Detainees in Iraq are still being tortured, receiving electric shocks and beatings with plastic cables, a report by Amnesty International said today.
The U.S. military responded that all detainees were being treated according to international conventions and Iraqi law.
Many of the cases in the report involve detainees held by Iraqi authorities.
Amnesty International said that interviews in Jordan and Iraq with former prisoners, relatives of current inmates and lawyers involved in detainees’ cases in Iraq showed that prisoner mistreatment had not ceased since the revelations in 2004 of abuse by U.S. troops at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad.
In the new allegations, former detainees asserted that they were beaten with plastic cables, given electric shocks and made to stand in a flooded room as an electrical current was passed through the water, the London-based human rights group said.
Its report said the interviews were conducted last year and this year.
On Sunday, sectarian violence killed at least five more people in Iraq. Three men died in a gunfight at a Sunni Muslim mosque in Baghdad, and two relatives of a top Sunni cleric were slain in a drive-by shooting.
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
