Abuse scandal erupts over secret Baghdad jail

BAGHDAD, Wednesday (AFP) Iraq faced a fresh prison scandal after Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari ordered an investigation into reports of abuse at a clandestine interior ministry jail.

The announcement came as 15 Iraqis, including 10 policemen and three soldiers, died in rebel attacks, a further sign of unabating violence exactly a month ahead of national elections.

US forces also announced the death of three marines in western Iraq where 80 insurgents have been killed in the past two days.

Jaafari told a press conference he had "received information relating to the presence of 173 Iraqi detainees at a centre run by the interior ministry, some of whom said they were badly fed or had been tortured."

US forces raided an underground shelter at an interior ministry building Sunday evening and found 167 undocumented detainees, most of them Sunnis, according to a source close to the government. They took the detainees to another holding facility and arrested police who had been guarding them, the source said.

US forces in Baghdad contacted by AFP declined to comment on the incident, but the US embassy welcomed Jaafari's statement of concern, noting that the Iraqi leader "confirmed that such practices are completely contrary to Iraqi government policy."

US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and General George Casey, the overall head of the US-led military force in Iraq, discussed the case "with the leaders of the Iraqi government at the highest levels.

"We agree with Iraq's leaders that the mistreatment of detainees is a serious matter and totally unacceptable."

While the Iraqi government is taking the lead in investigating the case and prosecuting those found guilty, US officials are providing technical help, including support from US Department of Justice and FBI investigators, the statement read. The UN mission in Iraq on Monday accused the interior ministry of maintaining hundreds of individuals in detention despite judicial orders for their release.

Sunni Arabs, who provide the backbone to the insurgency, have accused Shiite-led security agencies of engaging in torture and extra-judicial executions.

In an unrelated case, a brother of Iraq's Sunni Arab parliament speaker Hajem al-Hassani, seized with two bodyguards by Kurdish security officials a week ago, was released Tuesday by US and Iraqi security forces.

Hatem al-Hassani, 43, had been missing since November 8 in the ethnically mixed northern city of Kirkuk where he sells cars.