http://hrw.org/reports/2007/kurdistan0707/I
raq: Kurdistan Security Forces Torture Detainees
Regional Government Must End Detainee Abuse and Violations of Due Process
(New York, July 3, 2007) – Kurdistan security forces in northern Iraq routinely torture and deny basic due-process rights to detainees, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.
" The government must punish prison officials and interrogators found responsible for abuse. "
Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East & North Africa director
Human Rights Watch urges the Kurdistan Regional Government to end torture and ill-treatment of detainees in the custody of the security services. The Kurdish authorities should treat all detainees according to international standards and ensure their right to due process and fair trials.
The 58-page report, “Caught in the Whirlwind: Torture and Denial of Due Process by the Kurdistan Security Forces,” documents widespread and systematic mistreatment and violations of due process rights of detainees at detention facilities by Kurdistan security forces. The report is based on research conducted in Iraq’s Kurdistan region from April to October 2006, including interviews with more than 150 detainees.
Human Rights Watch raised its concerns with leaders of the Kurdistan government, including President Mas`ud Barzani of the Kurdistan Regional Government, who created a government committee to carry out inspection visits to several detention facilities in early October 2006.
“Kurdistan security forces routinely subject detainees to torture and other mistreatment,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director for Human Rights Watch. “Although Kurdish authorities have taken serious steps to improve conditions at detention facilities, they must do more to end the practice of torture. The government must punish prison officials and interrogators found responsible for abuse.”
The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) are the two principal parties in the Kurdistan region, and each maintains its own security forces, known as Asayish. Both the KDP Asayish and the PUK Asayish operate outside the control of the regional government’s Ministry of Interior, maintain their own detention facilities, and have held hundreds of detainees, particularly those arrested on suspicion of terrorism-related offenses.
During interviews at Asayish detention facilities, detainees told Human Rights Watch that Asayish agents had beat them with metal rods and other implements, put them in stress positions for prolonged periods, and kept them blindfolded and handcuffed continuously for several days at a time. The vast majority of detainees with whom Human Rights Watch spoke also reported that they were held in solitary confinement for extended periods. With some exceptions, Human Rights Watch found that conditions of detention at Asayish facilities were severely overcrowded and unhygienic.
Human Rights Watch also found that the Asayish are holding hundreds of detainees in legal limbo without basic due-process rights, including the right to challenge their detention. In the vast majority of Asayish detainee cases that Human Rights Watch investigated, the Kurdistan authorities have not charged detainees with offenses, allowed them access to their relatives or a lawyer, brought them before an investigative judge, provided a mechanism by which they could appeal their detentions, or brought them to trial within a reasonable time period.
Human Rights Watch also investigated several cases in which Kurdish authorities had apparently held hostage relatives of individuals sought for terror-related offenses. In other cases, convicted prisoners had already served their sentences but remained in prison, and detainees who had been tried and acquitted continued to be held. Most had no knowledge of their legal status, how long they would continue to be held, or what was to become of them.
“The Kurdistan authorities must charge detainees with criminal offenses or else release them,” said Whitson. “Detainees must be able to challenge the legal basis for their detention and receive a prompt, fair trial on the charges against them.”
In July 2006, the Kurdistan National Assembly adopted the Law on the Combat of Terrorism in the Iraq Kurdistan Region (Anti-Terrorism Law), which criminalizes a wide range of offenses deemed to constitute terrorism. This law has not clarified the legal status of those terrorism suspects who were arrested prior to its enactment. This includes several suspects arrested in joint sweeps involving Iraqi and US military forces, and subsequently transferred to the custody of Kurdistan authorities.
“The Kurdish authorities must establish clear criteria to assess the legal status of terrorism suspects arrested prior to the Anti-Terrorism Law,” Whitson said. “And they need to appoint an independent judicial committee to conduct a thorough review of all detainee cases.”
During the months that Human Rights Watch conducted research for this report, it held regular discussions with the Kurdistan authorities, and acknowledges the cooperation it received from officials of both the KDP and the PUK. The KDP and PUK both gave Human Rights Watch access to all Asayish detention facilities and facilitated interviews with Asayish officials, prison directors, legal advisers and other relevant actors. Human Rights Watch also acknowledges the seriousness with which the Kurdistan authorities responded to the concerns now highlighted in this report. Over the course of the last year, Asayish officials have initiated partial reviews of detainee cases and released several groups of detainees, most of whom they had held without due process.
While Human Rights Watch recognizes and welcomes the cooperation of the Kurdistan authorities, this cooperation has yet to translate into any discernible improvement for most detainees in Asayish detention facilities and falls well short of the independent and impartial judicial review of the legal status of detainees that Human Rights Watch has recommended as a matter of urgency.
Freelance journalist Nuri Kino has recently written the report "By God: Six Days in Amman." During six days in April, he met several Iraqi refugees in the capital of Jordan, and was able to hear why they had fled.
He has almost daily contact with Assyrians, also called Syriacs and Chaldeans, in the war struck Iraq. Only a couple of days ago he received a phone call about an Assyrian couple who had been killed because of them working as interpreters for the American embassy in Baghdad. They were on the wrong side.
"This is what it looks like almost every day," Says Nuri Kino.
But it is not the constant reports of homicides and persecutions, but the signals of a systematic and ethic cleansing of the Christian Assyrians in Iraq is taking place, which made Nuri Kino go to Jordan during spring.
Changed attitude
"During the time of Saddam, they were ethnically persecuted, but as long as they changed their names into Arabic or Kurdish ones, and agreed to be called only Christians, they were allowed to practice their religion in peace. Half a year after the American invasion, a new systematic persecution with one single aim started -- to extinguish the existence of the natives of Iraq.
Churches are bombed, priests are brutally killed, nuns are raped and children are kidnapped...and it continues".
"There are people who go as far as to call it genocide," He says, and refers to the president of the Christian Barnabas Foundation, with principal center in Great Britain.
At the moment there are between up to 150,000 Christian Assyrians in Amman, the capital of Jordan.
Want a Safe Haven
According to the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, about 1.9 million Iraqis are refugees in the neighboring countries, Syria and Jordan in particular.
The Catholic bishop in Baghdad, Andreas Abouna, said in a recent press release that as many as half of the Christian inhabitants of Iraq, as many as half a million people, have fled the country since the invasion of 2003.
"In 1991 the Kurds needed protection, in 2007 the Assyrians need protection," Says Nuri Kino.
"More and more Assyrian people are demanding an autonomous area in Iraq. That would be in the Plain of Nineveh, the ancient homeland of the Assyrians, where the Christians are still a majority of the population."
Sweden's Secretary of State, Carl Bildt, condemned Sunday's murder (AINA 6-3-2007) of an Assyrian priest and three deacons, saying "the attack is most tragic and unacceptable. There is need for a political development in order for human rights for all to become reality in Iraq.
The US Ambassador to Sweden said of Sunday's murders, "...a horrible act of terror. The issue of religious persecution in Iraq will be brought up for discussion by President Bush."
By Shamiram Demir
EasternStar News Agency
Edited by AINA
© 2007, Assyrian International News Agency. All Rights Reserved
http://www.usawatch.org/docs/wariniraq.pdf
"War and Occupation in Iraq" - A New NGO Report (June 2007)
Since the March 2003 invasion, the US-UK occupation of Iraq has utterly
failed to bring peace, prosperity and democracy, as originally
advertised. This major report assesses conditions in the country and
especially the responsibility of the US-led Coalition for violations of
international law. In twelve detailed chapters, brimming with
information, the authors provide a unique and compelling analysis of the
conflict, concluding with recommendations for action. Among the topics
covered are: destruction of cultural heritage, killing of civilians,
attacks on cities and long-term military bases. The report has been
written and produced by /Global Policy Forum/ and co-published by thirty
NGOs.
The USIP has published the report of the Iraq Study Group on its website. You can read it at:
Iraq Study Group: United States Institute of Peace
Iraq: Dujail Trial Fundamentally Flawed
Court Should Overturn Verdict, Death Penalty
REPORT AVAILABLE AT http://hrw.org/reports/2006/iraq1106/
(New York, November 20, 2006) – The trial of Saddam Hussein and seven other defendants before the Iraqi High Tribunal for crimes against humanity was marred by so many procedural and substantive flaws that the verdict is unsound, Human Rights Watch said in a 97-page report released today. The shortcomings of the trial, for the killings of more than 100 people from the Iraqi town of Dujail, also call into question subsequent proceedings at the tribunal.
" The proceedings in the Dujail trial were fundamentally unfair. The tribunal squandered an important opportunity to deliver credible justice to the people of Iraq. And its imposition of the death penalty after an unfair trial is indefensible. "
Nehal Bhuta, International Justice Program
“The proceedings in the Dujail trial were fundamentally unfair,” said Nehal Bhuta of the International Justice program at Human Rights Watch and author of the report. “The tribunal squandered an important opportunity to deliver credible justice to the people of Iraq. And its imposition of the death penalty after an unfair trial is indefensible.”
The report, entitled “Judging Dujail: The First Trial Before the Iraqi High Tribunal,” is based on 10 months of observation and dozens of interviews with judges, prosecutors and defense lawyers, and is the most comprehensive analysis to date of the trial. Human Rights Watch, which has demanded the prosecution of Saddam Hussein and his lieutenants for more than a decade, was one of only two international organizations that had a regular observer presence in the courtroom.
The Iraqi High Tribunal was undermined from the outset by Iraqi government actions that threatened the independence and perceived impartiality of the court. Members of parliament and even ministers regularly denounced the tribunal as weak, leading to the resignation of the first presiding trial judge.
“Judging Dujail” reports previously undocumented and serious procedural flaws in the trial, including:
• regular failure to disclose key evidence, including exculpatory evidence, to the defense in advance;
• violations of the defendants’ basic fair trial right to confront witnesses against them;
• lapses of judicial demeanor that undermined the apparent impartiality of the presiding judge; and
• important gaps in evidence that undermine the persuasiveness of the prosecution case, and put in doubt whether all the elements of the crimes charged were established.
The report also shows that the tribunal as an institution has struggled to competently perform basic administrative functions that are essential to a fair and effective trial. It failed to develop effective programs to address the needs of witnesses and victims or to ensure the security of defense lawyers, and ignored the important task of explaining the trial process to the Iraqi population.
The Dujail trial commenced before the Iraqi High Tribunal in Baghdad on October 19, 2005, and ended on July 27, 2006, with a verdict announced on November 5, 2006. Saddam Hussein and two other defendants were sentenced to death by hanging, and four defendants received prison terms ranging from 15 years to life. One defendant was acquitted at the prosecution’s request. The verdict and sentences are currently being appealed to the Appeals Chamber.
The trial concerned the aftermath of an assassination attempt against then-President Saddam Hussein in Dujail in July 1982. Government officials were accused of orchestrating an attack on the town’s inhabitants in revenge for the assassination attempt, resulting in the detention, torture and forced displacement of hundreds, and the deaths of more than 100 boys and men after a summary trial.
“The tribunal failed to meet basic fair trial standards in its first trial. Unless the Iraqi government allows experienced international judges and lawyers to participate directly, it’s unlikely the court can fairly conduct other trials,” said Bhuta.
The tribunal’s statute requires that death sentences be implemented 30 days after the final appeal, and that no commutation is possible. If the death sentence against Saddam Hussein is upheld on appeal, there is a chance that he will be executed before the conclusion of his ongoing trial for genocide against the Kurds.
Human Rights Watch opposes the death penalty as inherently inhumane punishment and says that executing Hussein while other trials are ongoing will also deprive many thousands of victims of their day in court.