Liberated Iraq Under US Occupation

A regime of torture and secret prisons

"The government of "liberated" Iraq operates secret prisons and routinely tortures prisoners to extract confessions that are used to convict them, Amnesty charged today.

The London-based rights watchdog released a report - Broken Bodies, Broken Minds - which estimates that 30,000 men and women remain in custody in post-Saddam Iraq, including about 1,300 on death row.

Amnesty said that some were languishing in secret facilities operated by the ministries of defence and the interior, which are believed to have close links to sectarian Islamist groups.

"Iraqi security forces use torture and other ill treatment to extract 'confessions' when detainees are held incommunicado, especially in detention facilities - some secret - controlled by the ministries of interior and defence," the report alleges.

Amnesty said that Iraq's Central Criminal Court often convicts defendants on the basis of "confessions" clearly obtained under torture.

Accounts of torture collected over the years include "rape and the threat of rape, beatings with cables and hosepipes, electric shocks, suspension by the limbs, piercing the body with drills, asphyxiation with plastic bags, removal of toenails with pliers, and breaking of limbs."