Prison Abuse: Iraqi Official Denies Captives Were Abused

Prison Abuse: Iraqi Official Denies Captives Were Abused
= December 13, 2005
By Kirk Semple

RAMADI, Iraq, Dec. 12 - The Iraqi Interior Ministry insisted Monday that none of the 625 prisoners discovered last week in an Iraqi detention center had been tortured or abused, despite assertions by American officials to the contrary.

The declaration by the ministry official was delivered as early voting began in Iraq's election for a full, four-year parliament, as soldiers, hospital patients and prison detainees across the country cast their ballots in advance of the rest of the electorate, which goes to the polls on Thursday.

The estimated 1.5 million Iraqi voters living abroad were also permitted to cast ballots at about 50 polling stations outside the country on Monday.

Even Saddam Hussein had a vote - under a law that preserves suffrage for detainees who have not been convicted - though officials did not reveal whether he chose to exercise that right.

The discovery of the prison was the second case in less than a month of a detention facility found with prisoners who seemed to have been tortured or abused. On Nov. 15, American soldiers entered an Interior Ministry basement and found 169 malnourished prisoners, some of whom, the Americans said, had been tortured. Most of those prisoners were Sunni Arabs.

Last week, a surprise American-Iraqi search of the detention center, which was run by an Iraqi commando unit attached to the Iraqi Interior Ministry, resulted in the discovery of an even larger number of prisoners.

An American official said the Americans and the Iraqis had found severely overcrowded conditions at the prison, with 13 of the prisoners in such bad shape that they needed to be hospitalized.

The exact nature of the maltreatment of the 13 hospitalized prisoners remained unclear. In an interview, Sami al-Anbagi, director general of the Interior Ministry, said there had been "no mistreatment or torture."

"Only a few guys were slapped on their faces," Mr. Anbagi said. "The prisoners who were taken to the hospital didn't have any serious injuries. They suffered from headaches only."

He did not elaborate on that point but added: "What do you want policemen to do after their colleagues have been attacked? Policemen die everyday because of those guys."

A spokesman for the American command disputed Mr. Anbagi's account, saying the physical condition of the prisoners who were hospitalized was worse than what Mr. Anbagi had described.

"These were very real medical conditions that needed immediate attention," said the spokesman, Lt. Col. Barry Johnson. "There were U.S. forces that provided medical attention on the scene and that transported them to the hospital."

In recent weeks, Sunni Muslim Arabs have charged that commando units working for the Interior Ministry have been carrying out killings and illegal abductions, and that they are abusing and torturing prisoners. Some Sunni leaders contend that the Interior Ministry has incorporated large numbers of Shiite militiamen into the police forces, and that those men are waging a campaign of terror in Sunni areas.

Despite the deep, sectarian suspicions aroused by the Shiite-run detention centers, political conditions appear to be set for a huge nationwide vote on Thursday, and American and Iraqi officials say they are anticipating a higher participation rate than the 64 percent turnout in the constitutional referendumin October.

The Sunni Arab leadership, which boycotted the elections in January, has universally urged its constituents to vote in order to increase their representation in parliament.

In addition, top American and Iraqi security officials say that they have refined their electoral security measures over the course of the year and that they feel confident that the voting will be relatively quiet. While election day in January was the single most violent day in Iraq since the invasion, insurgents were mostly held in check on the day of the constitutional referendum in October, with only 18 polling centers coming under attack, mainly by mortar fire and drive-by shootings, said Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a top American military spokesman in Iraq.

The government on Monday announced a series of measures intended to control violence this week, including prohibiting the carrying of weapons, declaring a national holiday from Tuesday to Thursday, closing the borders, extending a nighttime curfew, restricting domestic travel and banning the movement of vehicles from Wednesday to Saturday morning.

Additionally, there will be more troops than ever deployed throughout the country, including 160,000 Americans and about 225,000 Iraqis, up from 200,000 Iraqis in October and 138,000 in January, General Lynch said in an interview in Baghdad last week.

In the vicinity of polling places, Iraqi and American officials plan to use the same general system of security that they refined in the October referendum. The Iraqi police will guard the entrances of the sites while Iraqi Army troops will provide a close cordon of security. American forces, meanwhile, will form a loose outer cordon, conducting light patrols and serving as a quick reaction force in the event of an emergency.

While the threat to the election on Thursday is generally expected to be lower than in previous elections, the country's insurgent groups, including Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, remain a deterrent to voters.

On Monday, five Islamic militant groups, including Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, issued a rare joint statement on the Internet in which they denounced the elections as a "crusaders' project" in violation of Islamic law. But unlike statements before national elections in January and the constitutional referendum in October, the message did not threaten disruption of this elections.

However, insurgents in this city on the Euphrates River in the heart of Anbar Province, the Sunni Arab stronghold, have distributed fliers threatening residents with death if they go to the polls. Similar menacing messages have been posted on walls in towns in western Anbar, according to a Western diplomat who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation.

As a reflection of the continuing threat of violence in Anbar, electoral officials anticipate opening only 154 of 207 planned polling places in the province, according to Safwat Rashid Sidqi, a member of the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq. "The reason is security, only security," he said in an interview.

In order to make voters feel more secure, election authorities have instituted special procedures for some parts of Anbar, which had the lowest turnout among all provinces in October, with only 32 percent of voters going to the polls.

Here in Ramadi, the provincial capital of Anbar and a center of the insurgency, security at the polling stations will be entrusted to the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, which plans to hire private guards to secure the sites and frisk voters as they enter, American military officials said in interviews on Monday.

Election officials believe a lighter presence of government forces, which are identified with the Shiite-led government, might encourage more voters to come out. In October, less than 10 percent of voters in Ramadi cast ballots; in January, the number was less than 2 percent.

A similar arrangement will be introduced in the town of Ana, in western Anbar, said Mr. Sidqi of the electoral commission.

A series of military sweeps this year in towns along the Euphrates River, particularly in the Qaim region near the Syrian border, will mean that tens of thousands of people will have their first opportunity to vote since the fall of Saddam Hussein, military officials said.

Several of those towns had been under the grip of insurgents in January, preventing elections authorities from setting up voting centers.

American officials hope that widespread Sunni Arab participation will help to deflate the Sunni-backed insurgency and give more legitimacy to the new parliament.

Elections officials say an improved security situation will permit the opening of about 500 more polling centers than in October, bringing the total to 6,300.

The American military command anticipates a voter turnout of about 80 percent nationwide, and hopes that turnout in Anbar will climb to at least 45 percent, General Lynch said.

But he also warned that election d ay would likely not be free of violence.

"It ain't going to be perfect," he said. "You're not going to get a perfect security situation anytime soon, but it's much improved."

In continuing violence on Monday, insurgent attacks killed seven people, including an American soldier who died Monday when a patrol vehicle struck a concealed mine in Baghdad, according to the American military command. Another soldier was killed near Ramadi on Sunday in a suicide car bomb attack, officials said.
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Dexter Filkins contributed reporting from Baghdad for this article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/13/international/middleeast/13iraqxx.html?hp&ex=1134450000&en=500b89eb9fab6010&ei=5094&partner=homepage
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