More prisoners than ever, torture, in jails in Iraq

This is a video of Abu Ghraib, Iraq, torture photos.

As I wrote before: NO schools, hospitals, etc. were built in Iraq since Bush’s March 2003 invasion.

Bush’s Iraq war was officially about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

When that turned out to be lies, the Bush administration flip-flopped to talk about ‘rebuilding’ Iraq, about building houses, schools, hospitals.

Only talk, as the only things built in Iraq, as the US government says, are prisons (apparently, dictator Saddam Hussein had not built enough of those).

Oh yes, and the gigantic new US colonial governor’s building embassy in Baghdad (see also here).

And now, a wall to keep people apart who had been living together for centuries, but were set against each other in Bush’s and Blair‘s ‘divide and rule strategy‘.

Even all those new prison cellls, added to Saddam Hussein’s old ones, now turn out to be not enough for the occupation’s needs, the Washington Post from the USA writes:

New detainees strain Iraq’s jails

Sharp rise follows start of security plan; suspects housed with convicts

By Joshua Partlow

Updated: 4:21 a.m. ET May 15, 2007

BAGHDAD – The capture of thousands of new suspects under the three-month-old Baghdad security plan has overwhelmed the Iraqi government’s detention system, forcing hundreds of people into overcrowded facilities, according to Iraqi and Western officials.

Nearly 20,000 people were in Iraqi-run prisons, detention camps, police stations and other holding cells as of the end of March, according to a U.N. report issued last month, an increase of more than 3,500 from the end of January.

The U.S. military said late last week that it was holding about 19,500 detainees, up more than 3,000 since the U.S. and Iraqi governments began implementing the security plan in mid-February.

Estimates of those inside Iraqi facilities, where reports of beatings and torture are common, vary widely because detainees are dispersed among hundreds of locations run by different ministries.

The U.S. military holds detainees at two main centers, Camp Bucca in southern Iraq and Camp Cropper near Baghdad, and officials say they are committed to avoiding the abuses that occurred at the Abu Ghraib prison following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

Yes, they say so; whether they are doing so is a very different question …

In particular, several officials raised concerns about a detention center in Kadhimiyah, a predominantly Shiite neighborhood of northern Baghdad.

The center, built to hold about 400 people, is said to house more than 1,000, with juveniles mixed into the population, officials said.

Some former inmates at Kadhimiyah have told human rights officials that they were tortured.

“They described routine ill treatment or abuse while they were there,” said a U.N. official in Baghdad who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

“Routine beatings, suspension by limbs for long periods, electric shock treatment to sensitive parts of the body, threats of ill treatment of close relatives.

In one case, one of the detainees said that he was forced to sit on a sharp object which caused an injury.” …

A government legal committee, created under the security plan to monitor prisons, was denied access to Kadhimiyah when it requested an inspection, said Jasim al-Bahadeli, who heads the committee. …

Ahmed Kadhum Latif, 20, said he was imprisoned a year ago at Muthana air base on suspicion of planting a roadside bomb. …

Soon after he was arrested, Latif said, guards demanded he confess. For a while, he refused.

“They hung me in the air by my legs and beat me with a stick,” he said in a telephone interview.

“They beat me with pipes on my back and my stomach. They said, ‘Will you be confessing now or not?’ ”

Latif said the guards, who were drinking alcohol, used electric shocks to burn his hands and held him for three days without food.

“I finally said, ‘Yes, I have planted the explosives.’ I didn’t do it, but because of the beating, I confessed.”

“No detainee goes in that doesn’t get beaten,” said Shimmari. “They take confessions by force.” …

“application of electric shocks, fingernail extractions, and other severe beatings.

In some cases, police threatened and sexually abused detainees and visiting family members,” the [U.S. State Department] report said.

Torture in Iraq, Human Rights Watch report: here.

United Nations: torture in Iraq under Bush worse than under Saddam Hussein: here.

Media censored in Iraq war: here.

‘Stab in the back’ legends of the Right on lost wars, from Hitler and World War I to US Bushists and Iraq: here.

Iraq war and the money value of victims’ lives: here.

Indian play, Operation Flush, on Abu Ghraib: here.

Camp Bucca: here.

2005: The U.S. military said Monday it plans to expand its prisons across Iraq to hold as many as 16,000 detainees, as the relentless insurgency shows no sign of letup one year after the transfer of sovereignty to Iraqi authorities: here.