Saddam Hussein 'owned secret New York torture chamber'

Saddam Hussein owned a secret torture chamber in the Upper East Side of New York, Iraqi officials claim.

The dictator reportedly ordered the installation of a "detention room" in the basement of the Iraqi mission to the United Nations in 1979, shortly after he came to power in Iraq.

Two Iraqi officials, who wished to remain anonymous, told the New York Post : "It was a dark room. The doors were reinforced in a way that nobody could break in or out. You didn't need to soundproof it… You're not going to hear someone screaming down there."

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The torture chamber was reportedly under the control of the Iraqi intelligence service, the Mukhabarat, who would use it to torture US-based Iraqis, using tactics such as pulling out fingernails and administering beatings.

According to the officials, the US government removed evidence of the torture room following a raid on the building in 2003, shortly after Hussein was overthrown as Iraqi leader.

"US government officials came in. They took hard drives, computers. They went into vaults - they smash them open. Officially, they were running Iraq because we didn't have a government," they said.

Hussein's reign came to an end in 2003, following the US-led military intervention in Iraq. He was executed in 2006 for war crimes, including the killing of 148 Shiite Muslims, an act thought to be a revenge attack for a failed assassination attempt. Amnesty International estimate that up to 3,000 civilians were killed by Hussein's regime in 1997 alone.