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Iraqi troops accused of sodomizing elderly woman { January 25 2005 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.turkishpress.com/world/news.asp?id=050125121913.cssfkmlz.xmlhttp://www.turkishpress.com/world/news.asp?id=050125121913.cssfkmlz.xml
Iraqi troops accused of torture, judge slain in grim run-up to poll
01-25-2005, 12h19
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
BAGHDAD (AFP) - Gunmen shot dead a top Iraqi judge as charges that Iraqi forces were torturing suspects brought a grim reminder of Saddam Hussein's regime just days before elections are due to usher in democracy.
Accusations that Iraqi troops are using electric shocks on captives' genitals and earlobes and that male and female Iraqi detainees are subject to forced sodomy, cigarette burns and beatings, came from two civil rights groups.
And a US official, whose troops' behaviour in Abu Ghraib prison shocked the world, said that the embassy in Baghdad was concerned enough to raise the problem with the Iraqi government.
"Their record is not spotless on human rights," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
With the national elections now only five days away, Sunni militants raised the temperature in the streets of Baghdad.
In a daylight ambush, assailants gunned down a senior Baghdad judge and his brother-in-law and then danced in the street, shouting "this is what will happen to the traitor Shiites".
Judge Qaiss Hashem al-Shamari, 32, the secretary of Iraq's council of judges, who was driving with his brother-in-law, died in a hail of bullets.
"When they shot them, they jumped out of the car and started shouting 'this is what will happen to the traitor Shia'," a fellow judge told AFP.
Earlier this month, the governor of Baghdad and the capital's deputy police chief were gunned down as insurgents escalated their efforts to sabotage next Sunday's national election.
The latest killings followed a chill warning from Iraq's most-wanted man, Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, who said snipers would take out Iraqis who try to vote in the elections.
"Trained snipers will be ready to kill the apostates who go to the electoral lairs," said a statement signed by Zarqawi's Al-Qaeda Group in the Land of Two Rivers, handed out in the town of Al-Dur.
"The coming days will be the worst for those involved in the operation to establish the principles of apostates in the land of Islam," added the text.
In the relentless struggle between insurgents and the US-backed authorities, the government announced it had arrested Sami Mohammad Said al-Jaf, also known as Abu Omar al-Kurdi, a lieutenant to Zarqawi.
It alleged that Kurdi was responsible for 32 attacks, including the devastating 2003 bombing of the Baghdad UN headquarters that killed 22 people, including the world body's envoy in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello.
The fate of those detained by the Iraqi forces came under the spotlight from the New York-based Human Rights Watch, whose executive director for the Middle East and North Africa, Sarah Leah Whitson, said: "The Iraqi interim government is not keeping its promises to honor and respect basic human rights."
The rights group's investigation was based on interviews with 90 detainees in Iraq, including 72 who claimed to have been tortured or ill-treated, particularly under interrogation. Its probe was conducted between July and October 2004.
"Sadly, the Iraqi people continue to suffer from a government that acts with impunity in its treatment of detainees," Whitson said.
"Unlawful arrest, long-term incommunicado detention, torture and other ill-treatment of detainees (including children) by Iraqi authorities have become routine and commonplace," the group said in a 94-page report entitled, "The New Iraq? Torture and Ill-treatment of Detainees in Iraqi Custody," released Monday.
"Detainees report kicking, slapping and punching; prolonged suspension from the wrists with the hands tied behind the back; electric shocks to sensitive parts of the body, including the earlobes and genitals," it said.
Detainees also reported being kept blindfolded and handcuffed for several consecutive days.
A second US group charged on Monday that the US Army has failed aggressively to probe claims of detainee abuse in Iraq.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), citing newly released government files, said: "The documents that the ACLU has obtained tell a damning story of widespread torture reaching well beyond the walls of Abu Ghraib."
In one case, an "elderly Iraqi woman reported having been sodomized with a stick" while in another instance, investigators found "there was probable cause to believe" three soldiers committed the offenses of murder and conspiracy.
Despite the insecurity, Prime Minister Iyad Allawi predicted that Iraqis would turn out en masse to vote in the country's first multi-party elections in half a century and the first since Saddam fell in April 2003.
Voter turnout is expected to be extremely low in restive Sunni provinces, as Sunni parties have called for a boycott of the vote and extremist insurgent groups have threatened those who take part.
Meanwhile, a US soldier was killed in a bomb blast in Baghdad Monday, the US Army said in a statement Tuesday, while five US soldiers died in a road accident north of Baghdad.
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