Iraq 'broke promise' to close detention centre

Human Rights Watch (HRW), the New York based rights group, has called on Baghdad to start an independent investigation into allegations of torture and mistreatment, as well as other issues, at Camp Honour and other jails, the British newspaper, The Daily Telegraph has reported Tuesday. Joe Stork, HRW's deputy Middle East director said: "Iraqi security forces are grabbing people outside of the law, without trial or known charges, and hiding them away in incommunicado sites". Stork added: "The Iraqi government should immediately reveal the names and locations of all detainees, promptly free those not charged with crimes, and bring those facing charges before an independent judicial authority." HRW has said that 14 officials, lawyers and detainees it interviewed, stated that individuals had been until recently held at Camp Honour. This contradicts the recent announcement of justice minister Hassan al-Shammari, who in March 2011 announced that the camp would soon be closed. HRW also said judicial investigators were still carrying out interrogations at the facility. Prior to that announcement, The Los Angeles Times reported that prisoners were kept under harsh conditions at the detention facility in the defence ministry complex in Baghdad's heavily-fortified Green Zone, at times for up to two years. Former detainees at the facility told HRW last year that: "interrogators beat them, hung them upside down for hours at a time, administered electric shocks to various body parts, including their genitals, and asphyxiated them repeatedly with plastic bags put over their heads until they passed out". Amnesty International also said, in a February 2011 report that Iraq operates secret jails and routinely tortures prisoners to extract confessions that are used to convict them.