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February 2, 2011

Report: Iraq Runs Secret Prison in Baghdad 
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Human Rights Watch has revealed elite Iraqi counterterrorism forces are
operating a secret prison in Baghdad and torturing detainees at another.
According to the organization, the Iraqi government has transferred more
than 280 prisoners to a secret site in Camp Justice, an Iraqi-American
military base in northwest Baghdad. The transfer took place just days
before an international inspection team was to examine conditions at the
prisoners' previous location at Camp Honor in the Green Zone, where
reports of torture have surfaced. Approximately 80 of the 280 prisoners
held at the secret location have no access to attorneys or their
families. Prison inspectors are not permitted to conduct visits to the
facility. Human Rights Watch has urged the government to close the
facilities or move them under the control of the justice system and open
the locations for visits and inspections. Matthew Alexander, a former
U.S. interrogator in Iraq, said torture is not the most effective method
for retrieving information from prisoners.

Matthew Alexander: "Where I was, in Iraq, specifically, I heard foreign
fighters who had come there to fight say time and time again that the
reason they had come there to fight was because of pictures of Abu
Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. So we know that torture inflames people, and
to the point of violence, and it also is indicative of a state that's
abusive of its control over a population."



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