Torture in Iraq Still Routine, Report Says

"BAGHDAD - Twenty months after Saddam Hussein's government was toppled and its torture chambers unlocked, Iraqis are again being routinely beaten, hung by their wrists and shocked with electrical wires, according to a report by a human rights organization.

"Iraqi police, jailers and intelligence agents, many of them holding the same jobs they had under Hussein, are 'committing systematic torture and other abuses' of detainees, Human Rights Watch said in a report to be released Tuesday.

"Legal safeguards are being ignored, political opponents are targeted for arrest, and the government of interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi 'appears to be actively taking part, or is at least complicit, in these grave violations of fundamental human rights', the report concludes."

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