Iraq is still holding
prisoners at a detention facility that has been at the center of torture
allegations despite Baghdad having said it closed it a year ago, Human Rights
Watch claimed on Tuesday.
The New York-based rights
group called for Baghdad to start an independent investigation into allegations
of torture and mistreatment, as well as other issues, at Camp Honor and other
jails.
"Iraqi security forces
are grabbing people outside of the law, without trial or known charges, and
hiding them away in incommunicado sites," Joe Stork, HRW's deputy Middle
East director, said in a statement released by the rights group.
"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 said 14 officials,
lawyers and detainees it interviewed said individuals had been held recently at
Camp Honor, the apparent closure of which was announced by Justice Minister
Hassan al-Shammari in March 2011.
It also said judicial
investigators were still carrying out interrogations at the facility.
Previous to that
announcement, The Los Angeles
Times reported that prisoners were kept under harsh conditions at Camp
Honor, a detention facility in the defense ministry complex in Baghdad's
heavily-fortified Green Zone, sometimes 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."
London-based 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.
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