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Ex-general says Iranian led torture of detainees |
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Wednesday, 14 December 2005 |
 The Washington Times, BAGHDAD - An Iraqi general formerly in
charge of special Interior Ministry forces said yesterday that a senior
Iranian intelligence officer was in charge of a network of detention
centers where suspected insurgents were routinely tortured and
sometimes killed.
Gen. Muntazar Jasim al-Samarrai spoke to The Washington Times just as
Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said he had widened an urgent
investigation into complaints of abuse and torture in the country's
detention facilities.
The prime minister, who has been pressured by Washington and United
Nations officials to end prisoner abuses, promised at a press
conference a "very quick" public announcement on the findings.
Gen. al-Samarrai said the Iranian intelligence officer, Tahseer Nasr
Lawandi, works directly under the Kurdish deputy minister, Gen. Hussein
Kamel, and is known throughout the ministry as "The Engineer."
"The Engineer was behind the torturing and killing in the ministry and
was also in charge of Jadriya prison," said Gen. al-Samarrai, who left
the ministry after a dispute with superiors and is now living in Jordan.
U.S. troops raided the secret Jadriya facility in mid-November and
found 166 prisoners, many emaciated and bearing obvious signs of
torture.
An American raid on Thursday on another facility in Baghdad found 625
prisoners huddled in overcrowded and degraded conditions, including at
least 13 who required hospitalization. The existence of that prison was
first reported by The Washington Times on Saturday.
On Sunday, The Times in a joint investigation with World News &
Features identified the locations of at least four other detention
centers where torture was said to be routine. Gen. al-Samarrai said
yesterday that he knew of 10 such facilities.
Mr. Lawandi, who had been a colonel in the Iranian Mukhabarat
intelligence service, was granted Iraqi citizenship May 12, 2004, and
awarded the rank of general, Gen. al-Samarrai said by telephone from
Amman, Jordan, where he moved his family after two attempts on his life.
The Iranian officer not only masterminded interrogations, tortures and
executions at the prisons, but also would take part in torture
sessions, often using an electric drill, Gen. al-Samarrai said.
Some of the tortured prisoners were found in morgues with drill holes
in their legs and eyes, according to another security source, who
declined to be identified.
The general said Mr. Lawandi had worked with the minister and deputy
minister to form a special security service to run the detention and
interrogation operation and a separate group called the Wolf Brigade to
capture suspects and bring them to the secret locations -- usually
under cover of darkness.
Gen. al-Samarrai, a 46-year-old career officer, was ousted from the
Interior Ministry in a purge of about 600 staff in July. Many were
replaced by hard-line loyalists to new Interior Minister Bayan Jabr
Solagh and his allies in the Badr Brigade, a militia affiliated with
Iraq's largest Shi'ite religious party, the Supreme Council for Islamic
Revolution in Iraq.
The general said the minister had brought 17,000 Badr organization
fighters into the ranks of Interior Ministry forces after Iraq's
militias were officially disarmed. Most had received military training
in Iran and were infiltrated into Iraq soon after the defeat of
dictator Saddam Hussein.
Gen. al-Samarrai said he had angered his superiors by replacing the
members of an ineffectual 14-member inquiry commission and by releasing
124 detainees from a facility north of Baghdad.
That jibes with remarks by religious leader Abdel Karim Abdel Razzak,
who recently told an Arab television station that Gen. al-Samarrai had
freed him from prison.
While in the ministry and on visits to detention facilities, Gen.
al-Samarrai said, he often heard the officers and jailers speaking
among themselves in Farsi, the Iranian language, echoing previous
statements to The Washington Times by businessmen who visited the
ministry. Iraqi Shi'ites, although adherents of the same branch of
Islam, speak Arabic, not Farsi.
Gen. al-Samarrai also said that salaries for many of the ministry's employees came from Iran.
"Most of the torturers were either Iranians or were Iraqis who had
lived in Iran and had come to Iraq after the invasion" in 2003, he said.
Gen. al-Samarrai listed in detail a number of secret detention and
interrogation facilities that had been set up apart from the Jadriya
prison.
Four were in the Iraqi capital, including the one raided by American forces Thursday, he said.
Another three are in largely Shi'ite regions of the country, the
general said. He said there are also two detention centers for women in
Baghdad, where "female prisoners are tortured and raped." |
