BAGHDAD: Elite security forces controlled by the military office of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki of Iraq are operating a secret detention site in Baghdad, Human Rights Watch said today. The elite forces are also torturing detainees with impunity at a different facility in Baghdad, Human Rights Watch said. Beginning on November 23, 2010, and continuing over the next three to four days, Iraqi authorities transferred more than 280 detainees to a secret site within Camp Justice, a sprawling military base in northwest Baghdad, interviews and classified government documents obtained by Human Rights Watch reveal. The Army's 56th Brigade, also known as the Baghdad Brigade, and the Counter-Terrorism Service, both under the authority of the prime minister's office, control this secret site. The hurried transfers took place just days before an international inspection team was to examine conditions at the detainees' previous location at Camp Honor in the Green Zone. Human Rights Watch has also obtained a list of more than 300 detainees held at Camp Honor just before the transfer to Camp Justice. Almost all were accused of terrorism. “Revelations of secret jails in the heart of Baghdad completely undermine the Iraqi government's promises to respect the rule of law,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The government needs to close these places or move them under control of the justice system, improve conditions for detainees, and make sure that anyone responsible for torture is punished.” The Iraqi government should immediately close the facilities or regularize their position and make them open for inspections and visits, Human Rights Watch said. Approximately 80 of the 280 detainees are being held by the 56th Brigade at the secret site at Camp Justice and have had no access to lawyers or family members. Prison inspectors are not permitted to conduct visits to the section of the facility controlled by the 56th brigade, prompting fresh concerns that the brigade may be torturing detainees. According to government sources, the Counter-Terrorism Service is holding the 200 remaining transferred detainees, although the 56th Brigade maintains primary responsibility for security at the site in Baghdad's Kadhmiya neighborhood. In one of the 18 documents obtained by Human Rights Watch, a letter from the prosecutor's office of the Higher Judicial Council asks the Office of the Prime Minister to instruct officials at the Camp Justice site to stop preventing prison inspectors and relatives from visiting detainees. The letter, dated December 6, 2010, says such a refusal “meets neither legal nor humanitarian standards, unless [the refusal is] specifically ordered by a judge at a specialized court.”A second letter, dated January 13, 2011, from the justice minister to the Office of the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, through which the prime minister controls Iraqi security forces, stated that a 56th Brigade officer prevented prison inspectors from the Human Rights Ministry from visiting the site. The secret detention site is located within a legitimate Justice Ministry detention facility at Camp Justice, known as Justice 2 (Sijn al-Adaleh 2), which holds just over 1,000 other detainees. Camp Justice is the site of the former “Fifth Department” (al-Sha'ba al-Khamsa) intelligence office notorious during the rule of Saddam Hussein for torture and disappearances. The former dictator was executed there in 2006. Camp Honor, from which the detainees were transferred, became the subject of media scrutiny on January 23, after the Los Angeles Times uncovered abuse there and described the conditions as “miserable.” The article said detainees were held in cramped windowless cells that reeked of human excrement. Recent interviews by Human Rights Watch of more than a dozen former detainees from Camp Honor had documented how detainees are held incommunicado and in inhumane conditions, often for months at a time. Detainees described in detail the wide ranging abuses they endured during interrogation sessions at the facility, usually to extract false confessions. They said interrogators beat them, hung them upside down for hours at a time, administered electric shocks to various body parts, including the genitals, and asphyxiated them repeatedly with plastic bags put over their heads until they passed out. HRW
