The Happy Warrior
Joined: 10 Feb 2010
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Posted: Wed May 05, 2010 5:57 pm Post subject: Old Muthanna Airbase |
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is the New Abu Ghraib
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There, according to a slim report released by Human Rights Watch last week, which has been widely disseminated in the Iraqi press and is based on Muscati's interviews with 42 Muthanna detainees, nearly all the suspected insurgents--among them academics, physicians, and teenagers--were regularly tortured, including being "hung upside-down, deprived of air, whipped, beaten, given electric shocks, and sodomized." |
Aftermath
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The Iraqi government quickly shut down the prison after the torture was revealed last week, and either released or transferred its 431 detainees to another facility. The government also vowed to investigate the abuses, and so far, three army officers have been arrested in connection with the case.
The reports of horrific beatings and torture at the Defense Ministry-run secret facility at the old Muthanna airport in west Baghdad has angered the country�s Sunni population who see it as another example of persecution at the hands of Iraq�s Shiite-led government. It also shocked many Iraqi and U.S. officials, harkening back to images of the abuses of Iraqis by U.S. guards at the Abu Ghraib prison that inflamed insurgents and tarnished America�s image worldwide.
No Americans were involved in the secret prison, part of a row of barracks on an Iraqi army base at the Al-Muthanna airport. Officials said the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad first learned of it within the last month and leaned on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to shut it down. |
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