Torture widespread in Iraq bunker: ex-detainee

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - An Iraqi student who said he was held with prisoners in an Interior Ministry bunker described on Wednesday how he was hung blindfolded in excruciating positions and called a "Sunni dog" by his Shi'ite interrogators.

He was speaking after more than 170 detainees were discovered in the bunker on Sunday night during a raid by U.S. troops who were searching for a missing teenage boy.

"They blindfolded me and tied my hands behind my back and then hung me by a ceiling hook. My shoulders and arms felt like they would come off," the former detainee, who asked to be identified only by his initials, M.I., told Reuters.

"Other times we had to stand up straight and not move for 10 straight hours or face more torture."

There was no way to independently verify M.I.'s account

more:http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051116/wl_nm/iraq_abuse_bunker_dc

apples I thought?

Guess that bunch of "bad apples" has turned out to be a little more than that, eh? :shrug:

Looks like the new democracy hasn't changed that much. I guess now we have to overthrow the current Iraqi regime. After all, this sounds as bad as the torture under Saddam.

That is what * says. We also set an excellent example for others on spreading democracy. :sarcasm:

knew all about this and probably participated in it.

i wonder if this 'raid' and 'discovery' are some sort of tactic to blame someone else for the torture. look, the iraqi government did it, not us?

we ARE the iraqi government. face it.

In addition to reporting on a ghost network of torture facilities throughout Iraq, the Observer printed claims that torture was taking place right inside the Interior Ministry, the building that was just raided. The press should be asking the Bush cabal why nothing was done about this sooner.

Victim describes abuse at illicit ministry prison
Scores held in underground bomb shelter

By Ellen Knickmeyer
and Omar Fekeiki The Washington Post
Posted November 17 2005

BAGHDAD · Sunni Arab leaders and an alleged torture victim gave accounts Wednesday of bloody beatings, starvation and killings in a secret underground prison run by Iraq's Shiite-led Interior Ministry and uncovered by U.S. soldiers.

"Within seconds, I was swimming in the air," said a 20-year-old law student, who said that his captors yanked him to the ceiling by a metal chain looped through cuffs that bound his hands behind his back.

That abuse, he said, began the first torture session in what would be 37 days of confinement. In later sessions, he was placed in a barrel of cold water and simultaneously shocked with electrical current, he said at a Sunni political party headquarters, where he spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution by his former captors. His account could not be independently verified.

Three days after U.S. troops entered the illicit prison, and a day after Iraq's Shiite-led government acknowledged the detentions, allegations of torture and long-term detention at the Interior Ministry compound in Baghdad's middle-class Jadriyah neighborhood have become the most prominent of numerous accusations of abuse by the country's Shiite-dominated security forces.
(snip/...)

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/nationworld/sfl-asunnis17nov17,0,1795130.story?coll=sfla-news-nationworld

> They blindfolded me and tied my hands behind my back and then hung me
> by a ceiling hook.

Seem to remember that this was one of the "standard treatments" of the
Inquisition ... name escapes me at the moment but was well known for
the excruciating pain it caused by "bouncing" the rope (to raise and
drop the prisoner a foot or so).