US and UK aid funds Iraqi torture units

British and American aid intended for Iraq's hard-pressed police service is being diverted to paramilitary commando units accused of widespread human rights abuses, including torture and extra-judicial killings, according to the UK's Observer newspaper today.

The paper has been conducting a wide-ranging investigation of allegations of serious human rights abuses after concerns were been raised with the new Iraqi government by the Foreign Office, the US State Department and the United Nations. British Embassy officials in Baghdad have been briefed on the crisis by concerned senior Iraqi officials on several occasions.

The investigation revealed:

A 'ghost' network of secret detention centres across the country, inaccessible to human rights organisations, where torture is taking place.

Compelling evidence of widespread use of violent interrogation methods including hanging by the arms, burnings, beatings, the use of electric shocks and sexual abuse.

Claims that serious abuse has taken place within the walls of the Iraqi government's own Ministry of the Interior.

Apparent co-operation between unofficial and official detention facilities, and evidence of extra-judicial executions by the police.

The Observer says it has seen photographic evidence "which demonstrate serious abuse of suspects including burnings, strangulation, the breaking of limbs and - in one case - the apparent use of an electric drill to perform a knee-capping."

Steve Crawshaw of Human Rights Watch,said: "There has been the attempt to suggest that because Saddam's regime is over now everything is rosy in Iraq. What is happening in official places in Iraq is simply horrific and must be stopped."

It looks as though just how far the consent for torture extends within the Iraqi government is still unclear, with the British Foreign Office and British Ministry of Defence saying that they do not condone such acts, always bring any evidence for them to the attention of the Iraqi authorities and expect any perpetrators to be prosecuted. Some Iraqi officials also seem to be horrified by what elements of their government are doing.

However there are a few issues that this investigation highlights which should be addressed and which are certainly not part of the debate as yet, at least in the US.

Both the US and UK governments are clear in their spoken commitments against giving aid to nations which torture, yet the UK alone has given almost $80 million to Iraq in aid for its police and security forces. Some of that aid has been diverted by Iraqi officials to fund abuse and abduction.

To continue doing so without (at least) justifying the aid on some basis of practical expediency is hypocritical and denies the people of these democratic nations their rightful due.

Further, the investigation shows that the Iraqi government and security forces are far more fragmented in leadership, accountability and factionalism than the public had been led to believe by official government statements. In particular, it is a significant departure from Bush's Fort Bragg speech.

Questions must be asked as to why, given that this situation has been known to the US and UK governments for some time, eliminating such excesses has not been part of the publicly-stated agenda nor the public debate which Bush and Blair have wanted to lead.

Lastly, this report is a major blow to the idea that the new Iraqi government is a guiding example of democracy for the rest of the region.

It would appear that, from a standing start where every effort had been made to wipe the slate clean, the Iraqis have chosen to step backwards towards torture and secret police abductions in the night. This is not the course we were led to expect nor is it a course which we would wish the rest of the Middle East to see as "acceptable to the US and the UK".

The criticism must be levelled - if the allies had not gone so far out of their way to be apologists for their own abuse of detainess and disregard for due process, the Iraqis would surely have been far less liable to follow suit. As it is, Iraqi torture and covert detentions blow a huge hole in Blair and Bush's credibility and in that of their "plan" (what there is of it).

Were the current US and UK administrations not so deeply invested in the Iraqi government, they would no-doubt describe it as a "rogue state".

Update 4th July

There's actually more Guardian coverage of this story which I missed on first look - a harrowing account of torture from the Guardian's senior man in Iraq:

What happened to him in his 24 hours in captivity was written across his body in chapters of pain, recorded by the camera. There are police-issue handcuffs still attached to one wrist, from which he was hanged long enough to cause his hands and wrists to swell. There are burn marks on his chest, as if someone has placed something very hot near his right nipple and moved it around.


A little lower are a series of horizontal welts, wrapping around his body and breaking the skin as they turn around his chest, as if he had been beaten with something flexible, perhaps a cable. There are other injuries: a broken nose and smaller wounds that look like cigarette burns.


An arm appears to have been broken and one of the higher vertebrae is pushed inwards. There is a cluster of small, neat circular wounds on both sides of his left knee. At some stage an-Ni'ami seems to have been efficiently knee-capped. It was not done with a gun - the exit wounds are identical in size to the entry wounds, which would not happen with a bullet. Instead it appears to have been done with something like a drill.


What actually killed him however were the bullets fired into his chest at close range, probably by someone standing over him as he lay on the ground. The last two hit him in the head.

The facts are certain, the only question that remains is whether it is institutionalised policy or rogue elements we should hold responsible.

Think on something over your 4th of July grill. Is this the kind of "spreading democracy" you believe in?