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Amnesty International Slams Torture Of Political Prisoners in Iraq
BERLIN, Aug 15 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - In a report published Wednesday, Amnesty International denounced the systematic torture of political prisoners in Iraq, news agencies reported.
"Many of the victims are marked for life by the torture and some have even died while being tortured," the London-based prisoners' rights group said in its report, said Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Amnesty, the world's largest human rights organization, called on Iraqi authorities to end its policy of torture and take measures to improve the country's human rights record.
The report was based on hundreds of interviews with former political prisoners, including many members of the political opposition - as well as Shiite Muslims and members of the security forces suspected of supporting the opposition, said AFP.
Among methods of torture listed were knife cuts, sexual attacks, electric shocks, eye gouging, cigarette burns, pulling of fingernails and mutilation of the hands with an electric hammer, according to victims and witnesses cited in the report.
The report tells the story of theology student Nazzar Kadhim al-Bahadi, 29, arrested in the spring of 1999 and tortured over a long period of time. In August 1999, relatives of al-Bahadi were tortured in front of him.
In order to protect them he confessed to taking part in disturbances in Saddam City earlier that year.
He was condemned to death and executed early this year.
Women are also abused in Iraq, the report said.
In late December 2000, a 25-year-old woman was decapitated in front of her children because her husband had escaped arrest, Amnesty said.
In April, the U.N. Human Rights Commission condemned Iraq for what it called "systematic and extremely serious violations" of human rights and repression.
The resolution also condemned Iraq's use of the death penalty, summary executions and the generalized use of torture.
Earlier in August, the head doctor of Abu Ghraib, Iraq's largest and most notorious prisoners' hospital, told news agencies that Saddam Hussein's younger son, Qusai, personally supervised the mass execution of political detainees in Abu Ghraib.
In a joint interview with Iraq Press, an Iraqi news agency that claims government independence, and the London-based Azzaman newspaper, Maher Fakher Khashan, a physician, gave details of summary executions and barbaric tortures he witnessed while at the prison hospital.
Khashan, who fled from Iraq to Jordan recently, was also a witness to the 1998 massacre in which 2,000 inmates were executed in a single day as part of Saddam's so-called ''prison cleansing campaign", said Iraq Press.
''Executions occur periodically at Abu Ghraib. Every Wednesday some inmates are killed. A prisoner who is to be executed carries a number on his chest without a name. The majority of those executed are political detainees,'' Khashan said, reported Azzaman.
The last executions seen by Khashan were carried out as recently as July 8, 2001, only days before his flight to Jordan. ''They included 34 inmates, among them a middle-aged woman,'' he said.
Khashan said Abu Ghraib was overcrowded, with approximately 10,000 inmates crammed into wards originally designed to accommodate 1,250 prisoners, reported Azzaman.
Security forces used to bring their detainees to Abu Ghraib hospital along with the prison governor who ''forced one of the doctors to inject them with a syringe which he carried.''
''The prisoners passed away instantly but the doctors were compelled to issue death certificates telling that they had died of natural causes,'' Khashan said.
Khashan denied he ever signed such certificates. He said he preferred to flee the country rather than be part of such barbaric practices.
Khashan also said he had seen Qusai Saddam Hussein ordering Abu Ghraib's governor to kill 50 inmates in 1998. ''They were executed in one hour and a half,'' he said.
In addition to overcrowding, Khashan said the health conditions in Abu Ghraib are appalling. ''Diseases are rampant due to malnutrition,'' he said.
Torture is routine in Abu Ghraib. Khashan said a special team of eye doctors is charged by Saddam to gouge out eyes of those executed inside the prison hospital.
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