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Iraq authorities charging police officers after prison abuse investigation

By Bernard Hibbitts (editor) and University of Pittsburgh School of Law students.

[JURIST] Iraqi Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani said Tuesday that more than 40 police officers face charges following an investigation that revealed abuses in the country's prisons and criminal justice system. Among the alleged abuses, police are believed to have arrested individuals without warrants. Additional allegations, including torture and bribery, were leveled by Ali al-Miyali, an Iraqi lawmaker associated with Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The Iraqi government is attempting to resolve the controversial issue of police behavior before the national parliamentary elections, scheduled for January 30, 2010. Earlier this week, it was reported that hundreds of Iraqi prisoners had gone on a hunger strike to protest being tortured into giving false confessions. In August, officials for Iraq's Human Rights Ministry said that they plan to prosecute those suspected of torturing inmates of the country's prison system. In November 2005 US troops found 173 prisoners, many abused, in a secret bunker run by the Interior Ministry. Earlier that year, then-UN secretary-general Kofi Annan said that Iraq's detention practices may violate international law and expressed concern over the failure of Coalition forces to publish the results of their investigation into the torture allegations. In December 2005, then-interior minister Bayan Jabr fired Nouri al-Nouri, the country's senior inspector handling human rights issues, in connection with a torture scandal involving dozens of prisoners at a Baghdad prison. Jabr himself has been accused of running secret prisons and controlling death squads, charges he has downplayed or denied.

Full post as published by JURIST - The Paper Chase on June 17, 2009 (boomark / email).