173 detainees found tortured in Bagdad

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraq's prime minister said Tuesday that 173 Iraqi detainees -- malnourished and showing signs of torture -- were found at an Interior Ministry basement lockup seized by U.S. forces in Baghdad. The discovery appeared to validate Sunni complaints of abuse by the Shiite-controlled ministry.\nThe revelation about the mostly Sunni Arab detainees by Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari was deeply embarrassing to the government as critics in the United States and Britain questioned the U.S. strategy for building democracy in a land wracked by insurgency, terrorism and sectarian tension.\n"I was informed that there were 173 detainees held at an Interior Ministry prison and they appear to be malnourished," al-Jaafari said of Sunday's raid at a detention center in the fashionable Jadriyah district. "There is also some talk that they were subjected to some kind of torture."\nOne detainee had been crippled by polio and others suffered "different wounds," the deputy interior minister, Maj. Gen. Hussein Kamal, said without elaboration.\nAl-Jaafari, a Shiite, promised a full investigation and punishment for anyone found guilty of torture.\nIn Washington, a State Department spokesman said the Bush administration found the reports troubling.\n"We don't practice torture, and we don't believe that others should practice torture," said the spokesman, Adam Ereli. "We think that there should be an investigation, and those who are responsible should be held accountable."\nBut the head of Iraq's largest Sunni political party said he had spoken to al-Jaafari and other government officials about torture at Interior Ministry detention centers, including the one where the detainees were found.\nMohsen Abdul-Hamid, leader of the Iraqi Islamic Party, said the government routinely dismissed his complaints, calling the prisoners "former regime elements," meaning Saddam Hussein loyalists.\nU.S. Brig. Gen. Karl Horst, who commanded the troops in Sunday's raid, said American and Iraqi forces plan to carry out checks at every Interior Ministry detention facility in Baghdad, the Los Angeles Times reported. It was not immediately clear why U.S. forces chose to move in Sunday.\n"We're going to hit every single one of them, every single one of them," the Times quoted Horst as saying.\nSunni politicians have been complaining of torture, abuse and arbitrary arrest by special commandos of the Shiite-controlled Interior Ministry since the current government took power last April.\nSunnis have also accused the ministry of being behind "death squads," rumored to be made up of former members of Shiite militias, which target Sunnis in reprisal for the killings of Shiites by Sunni Arab insurgents. Interior Minister Bayn Jabr has denied any role in such killings.\nKamal, the deputy interior minister, was quoted by CNN as saying the skin of some of the detainees in the Baghdad center had peeled off parts of their bodies. He later declined to confirm the allegation to The Associated Press.\nSunni Arab complaints have taken on new urgency because of American efforts to encourage a big Sunni turnout in the Dec. 15 parliamentary elections in hopes of undermining Sunni support for the insurgency. In recent days, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan have all visited Iraq to promote Sunni participation.\nU.S. officials have also been pressing the majority Shiites and their Kurdish allies to reach out to the minority community -- which dominated the country during Saddam's regime.\nU.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, have expressed their "deep concern" over the condition of the detainees "at the highest level" of the Iraqi government, a U.S. Embassy statement said.\n"We agree with Iraq's leaders that the mistreatment of detainees is a serious matter and totally unacceptable," the statement added.