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Iraq PM creates prison abuse investigatory committee

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

[JURIST] Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki created a special committee Thursday to investigate alleged abuse and torture in the country's prisons. Comprised of eight members, the committee reportedly includes representatives from human rights and judicial government agencies and security ministries. The panel will report its findings to al-Maliki within two weeks. The decision to create the panel follows the recent charges against 43 Iraqi police officers for human rights abuses, warrantless arrests, and bribery allegations. The violations were discovered by an investigatory committee formed by Iraq Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani. Loyalists to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr have pressured the Iraqi government over prison conditions that they claim include confessions elicited from torture and politically motivated false accusations. The government is attempting to resolve the controversial police behavior issues before the national parliamentary elections scheduled for January 30, 2010. Hundreds of Iraqi prisoners have recently gone on a hunger strike to protest torture-elicited false confessions. In August, officials for Iraq's Human Rights Ministry discussed a plan to prosecute those suspected of torturing inmates in the country's prisons. In 2006, 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. In November 2005 US troops found 173 prisoners, many abused, in a secret bunker run by the Interior Ministry. 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 19, 2009 (boomark / email).