IRAQ-TORTURE/UN U.N. experts report lack of accountability for widespread torture in Iraq

Record ID: 145858

  • Title: IRAQ-TORTURE/UN U.N. experts report lack of accountability for widespread torture in Iraq
  • Date: 29th July 2015
  • Summary: SCREEN WITH THE NAMES OF THE SPEAKERS
  • Embargoed: 13th August 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Switzerland
  • Country: Switzerland
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVAF0OZLJQLD99EP1XCD6GE4LW6
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: The U.N. Committee Against Torture conducted a review of Iraq Wednesday (July 29), finding widespread use of torture in the country and a lack of accountability.
    According to the experts, torture is used in Iraq against both men and women, who are often forced into signing false confessions.
    "There have been reports that few tortured women have been visited, for example, by Human Rights Watch, in different prisons, and they displayed serious injuries: scars, burns, fractured nose, for example, and the rest," said co-chairperson of the committee George Tugushi.
    He added that women who succeeded in escaping ISIS were abandoned by authorities, who were unable to provide them any shelter.
    Tugushi went on to challenge the Iraqi delegation delegation to name a single person that had actually been jailed for such a crime, despite the recorded prevalence of torture in the country.
    "The Defense Ministry, Interior Ministry, I think Prosecutor's office, were unable to provide statistics that any of the public officials, law enforcement officers, has been prosecuted for committing acts of torture. But in the report we see cases of torture are hundreds, and thousands," he said.
    Iraq's criminal law has no adequate definition of torture, making it difficult to prosecute such cases, another expert pointed out.
    Questions regarding torture make the list of concerns that the small Iraqi delegation, led by Deputy Minister of Human Rights Adbulkareem Al-Janabi will try to respond to in a second session on Thursday.
    Other questions included whether Iraq has secret detention facilities, whether anybody has been compensated for being tortured, and how to explain trials that lasted a few minutes and led to the death penalty, in a justice system which seems to be based on revenge rather than simply reading the law.
    "According to non-governmental source of information, there would be thousands of detainees in Iraq who are held in secret detention, without charge or trial for long periods of time before being brought before a public prosecutor. Places where persons are secretly detained would be precluded from inspection of human rights organs, or institutions," U.N. expert Alessio Bruni pointed out.
    Iraq ratified the U.N. Convention against torture in 2011, but NGOs including Amnesty International say torture is still widespread, with no noticeable change since Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi took over from Nuri al-Maliki in late 2014.
    Some U.S. officials also privately question whether Al-Abadi can beat the Islamic State militants who have captured swathes of Iraq without repeating earlier abuses that stoked Sunni Iraqis' anger towards the government.
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