THE revelation that 173 Iraqis had been abused and tortured by fellow-Iraqis in a Ministry of Interior building in the heart of Baghdad is deeply disturbing. Though some politicians have demanded an international inquiry into this disgraceful crime, Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari has launched an urgent government investigation. Maybe he feels Iraqis should be tending to their own affairs with minimum outside interference.
However the government must realize that an immense amount hangs on the speed, fairness and outcome of this inquiry. That detainees were being kept half-starved, some clearly tortured in an official building, is not in doubt. The questions that need to be addressed are how they got there and when, who arrested them, who continued to imprison them and who authorized or condoned their mistreatment. As soon as the report provides the answers, the authorities must act to arrest and bring the guilty to trial, whoever they are.
It does not matter what crimes the detainees were suspected of committing; they are entitled to proper treatment and due process. Holding suspects in a hellhole where they are tortured and abused smacks of the standard brutality of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist administration. The ending of this ruthless and sadistic state security apparatus was one of the reasons advanced in justification of the war after the original rationale, the WMD, proved unfounded. If such depravities are allowed to return, then all the bloodshed and misery of the last two and a half years will have been for nothing.
It is particularly disturbing that the majority of the distressed detainees found Sunday, when US troops took over the Interior Ministry building, appears to be Sunni. There are allegations that the “security forces” imprisoning them were actually members of the Shiite Badr Brigade militia, who had perhaps infiltrated the ranks of the Iraqi police. It is for this reason that the largely Sunni Iraq Islamic Party has called for a UN-led inquiry.
However if the UN can’t step in now, or the Jaafari government does not want a UN role they should ensure that their inquiry team works rapidly and efficiently gathering and sifting the evidence. Maintaining its independence in the face of inevitable political pressure will be extremely difficult. But everything, including the trust of Iraqi Sunnis, hangs on a just and fair outcome, followed by the arrest and trial of anyone suspected of crimes.
Iraq was brutalized for 35 years. Many saw the collapse of Baathism as an opportunity for payback time for the terrible injuries they had suffered. But as moderate religious and political leaders have repeatedly made clear, imitating the wickedness of Saddam’s dictatorship will not build a free and just pluralist Iraq; it will only guarantee its descent into civil strife and yet more bloodshed and misery. This investigation must end with the truth. Too much is at stake to risk a whitewash.
