Torture continues

last updated 8 January 2015

Baghdad

Iraqi authorities have been torturing detainees, according to a leading human rights organization. Many of Iraq’s prison guards and intelligence agents are the same people who held those jobs under Saddam Hussein, when torture was routine. Human Rights Watch claims that, while the worst atrocities of the Saddam era—scarring prisoners’ faces with acid, or raping their daughters in front of them—have ended, the use of beatings and electric shocks to the genitals continues. In a separate report, the ACLU accused the U.S. military of failing to investigate the abuse of Iraqis by U.S. soldiers at many prisons, not just Abu Ghraib.