NCRI – Ten years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, executions, forced confessions and the torture of prisoners – especially of women – is still rife in Iraq, a new report by Amnesty International has revealed.
And the Iraqi government is making no efforts to improve the appalling abuses of human rights being perpetrated in the country, Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa Deputy Director Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui said.
Since December, thousands of mainly Sunni Muslim demonstrators had also been staging street protests against the abuses and discrimination against the Sunni population, the report stated.
Ms Hadj Sahraoui added: “The fundamental human rights gains that should have been achieved during the past decade have signally failed to materialize.
“Neither the Iraqi government nor the former occupying powers have adhered to the standards required of them under international law and the people of Iraq are still paying a heavy price for their failure.”
The report outlined shocking abuses on prisoners – particularly political detainees held in solitary confinement – who suffer electric shocks to the genitals, partial suffocation with plastic bags and being beaten while suspended in contorted positions.
Deprivation of food, water and sleep, and threats of rape of female relatives are also widespread, while women detainees are raped or sexually abused, the report alleged.
Meanwhile Iraq had simply excused the barbaric treatment of prisoners as ‘isolated occurrences’, Amnesty alleged.
The death penalty which was suspended after the 2003 invasion was also quickly restored and executions resumed in 2005, the report said, and since then at least 447 prisoners have been executed, including Saddam Hussein and some of his main associates.
Hundreds of prisoners await execution on death row in Iraq in a country that had now become one of the world’s leading executioners, the report continued.
Hadj Sahraoui said: “Death sentences and executions are being used on a horrendous scale. It is particularly abhorrent that many prisoners have been sentenced to death after unfair trials and on the basis of confessions they say they were forced to make under torture.
“It is high time that the Iraqi authorities end this appalling cycle of abuse and declare a moratorium on executions as a first step towards abolishing the death penalty for all crimes.”
Hadj Sahraoui concluded: “Iraq remains caught in a cycle of torture and impunity that should long ago have been broken. It is high time that the Iraqi authorities take the concrete steps needed to entrench a culture of human rights protection, and do so without further prevarication or delay.”
