All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm looking at hrw.org.
That's the website for Human Rights Watch.
The headline, Iraq, secret jail uncovered in Baghdad.
And joining us on the line from Human Rights Watch is Samer Mouskadi.
Welcome to the show.
Thank you so much, Scott.
It's great to be here.
I'm very happy to have you here.
First of all, can you tell us a little bit about how this thing came together?
Because I see that Amnesty International was involved in it, too.
Was this some kind of joint project with y'all?
It wasn't, unfortunately.
You know, detention issues and torture is such a problem in Iraq that I guess different organizations are trying to address it.
So these are completely different reports by the two groups.
Yes.
Oh, wow.
I mean, we were looking mainly at security forces attached to the prime minister, whereas the report that Amnesty did a few months ago, and they've kind of brought it out again, is looking at the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Interior.
But torture is a phenomenon across Iraq's facilities, unfortunately.
So, yeah, so we're just reporting it from different angles.
All right.
And now what exactly was your involvement in this report?
Well, it stemmed from some of the research we did on the ground back in April when we uncovered a facility at the Muthanna Air Base.
And the detainees who were held there were tortured in a horrific manner.
We interviewed about 42 of them, and they had been sodomized.
They had been suffocated, beaten with cables, had their nails pulled out.
And it was quite horrific stuff.
And we realized then that these guys were actually being held by this elite security force that's under the prime minister's office control, the military office.
And so we started looking deeper into this issue, and unfortunately this site is not unique.
We most recently uncovered a different site in Baghdad, Camp Justice, where about 280 detainees are held incommunicado without access to their families, without access to lawyers, and even inspectors aren't allowed into the facility.
And we also uncovered torture at a different site in Baghdad, in Camp Honor, where detainees are also being abused and suffered similar types of abuses that we saw before.
And I think it's important to note that all these abuses are happening under brigades and the counterterrorism force that is under the authority of the office of the prime minister.
Well, in fact, we were talking with Jason Ditz from antiwar.com just the other day about how post the botched elections of last March, Maliki has basically refused to fill the positions of the cabinet-level positions of the commanders of these different police agencies, and has left them all basically just accountable to him.
Well, also, I mean, there's a problem when we went there.
We wanted to meet, for instance, with the minister of interior and the minister of defense, and neither of those posts have been filled as of yet.
So even though we've had an election that was coming to almost a year now, we still don't have anyone in those key posts.
Right, and so really Nouri al-Maliki is, that's a nifty kind of way of, I guess, you know, an easy sort of way of consolidating and making himself more of a dictator, get rid of the last checks and balances really in the bogus constitution of 2005 anyway, and just make himself the new Saddam Hussein, right?
Fail to appoint the ministers and just leave kind of junior-level people directly accountable to him only.
Yeah, I'm not sure I would go that far.
I think what's happening is quite worrying in the sense that we are seeing a more authoritarian approach to what's been happening, but at the same time, you know, I think that within the government there are defenders of human rights, and within some of the ministries as well we have people working actively for human rights.
So it's not as bleak as one would imagine, at least, you know, especially in the Human Rights Ministry.
There's a few defenders there who are trying to work to bring these issues to light.
And also I think in terms of the prime minister, he does face significant challenges, obviously with the high levels of terrorism that's happening and the security situation there.
You know, it's obvious he doesn't justify what's happening in terms of the response by security forces, but at the same time, it is a difficult place to be a prime minister.
Well, and you know, he wasn't shy last year about having his political opposition rounded up, right?
Which episode are you referring to?
Well, there was kind of a whole spate, I'm sorry I don't know all the names, but there was kind of a whole spate of people from Iyad Alawi's party being arrested and excluded and in some cases assassinated leading up to and also after the elections.
Well, I mean, we looked at the election and there was an issue with a lot of candidates who had been blocked from running the election because of alleged ties to the Ba'ath Party and those people didn't have any recourse in terms of challenging this decision.
And it was an unfortunate sort of decision that was made.
But weren't many of them arrested and so forth or not?
We didn't see any.
I mean, there was some arrests, but it wasn't, you know, in terms of assassinations, we didn't see any assassinations that were directly tied to the prime minister's office.
I see.
And so basically now, though, the deal has been made then between the Saudis and the Maliki group, their two parties that they conform, they have the majority in the parliament and they're going to continue on with Maliki as the prime minister for now?
That's basically a done deal at this point?
Yeah, I mean, we'll see.
I mean, we'll see what happens.
It's supposed to be a national unity type government where they have different forces, including the Kurdish alliance and even Iraqia.
Iraqia being Iyad Alawi's party that so-called represents the interests of the Sunnis, right?
Well, I mean, it represents the Sunnis, but also it's broader than that.
I mean, I wouldn't say it's sectarian.
I think they represent moderate Shias as well as others as well.
I guess a better way to say it would be they're the only big party that does represent the Sunnis at all, whereas, for example, the Dawood party does not, right?
Yeah, but there are other parties, I guess, that represent Sunni interests as well, but on a much smaller scale, but Iraqia is, yes.
All right.
Well, so now, you know, I kind of hate to do it, but it kind of bears repeating just maybe to make up for the fact that they're not going to talk about this on CNN and MSNBC.
Can you give us some more details about the tortures?
There's quite a write-up just in the sort of introductory piece here at the hrw.org website.
Yeah, well, I mean, it's the most recent allegations that we investigated are at Camp Honor.
This is a facility that's in the Green Zone, and it's technically under the Ministry of Justice, but what we see in application is that it's actually controlled by the Brigade 56.
It's an army division that's theoretically under the Ministry of Defense, but it actually takes its orders from the military office of the prime minister and the counterterrorism service, which also is under the authority of the military office of the prime minister.
And we interviewed former detainees who were held there, as well as interviewed other people who had been in the facility and had seen these detainees, and they were held in quite horrific conditions.
Usually the abuse that they endured was to elicit confessions, and it involved electric shocks.
We've heard cases of beatings with cables, with drills, with pulling out nails, and those sorts of things.
So it's quite similar to what we've seen, unfortunately, in other facilities before, but nonetheless, it's always shocking when you see these kinds of abuses happening.
And the issue with torture in Iraq, I mean, it's not just an issue with the current government, obviously.
It's something that's been going on with the previous regime under Saddam.
And then after the occupation, we saw the same type of abuses happening in Abu Ghraib and other facilities that were operated by the U.S. military, and then also by the British forces in the south in Basra.
There's been a few cases of abuses that have happened under detention where detainees were tortured, and in some cases were killed.
So it's a problem with the system, and it's sort of a legacy that continues in Iraq.
All right, well, we're going to have to hold it right there and go out to this break.
We're talking with Samer Mouskati from Human Rights Watch and their new report about the secret torture prisons under Nouri al-Maliki's authority in Iraq.
It's Antiwar Radio.
Saddam Hussein no longer fills fields with remains of innocent men, women, and children because we act as Saddam's torture chambers and rape rooms and children's prisons have been closed for good.
Well, of course, the problem with that is, as Samer Mouskati from Human Rights Watch is reporting today, those torture and rape rooms have remained open, now under the stewardship of Nouri al-Maliki and the Dawa Party in a government that is basically a joint project of the United States and Iran.
I don't suppose you guys asked the Iranians for comment about how their puppets are responsible for such things, but did you ask the State Department or the Defense Department that remain in Iraq if they had any comment about these torture prisons there in Iraq, Samer?
We did.
I mean, we're focused mainly on sort of bringing these abuses to light and we're hoping that obviously the media does ask us important questions.
And also, we are going to be releasing a report hopefully next week that looks at a range of issues eight years after the invasion of Iraq, including women's rights, minority rights, disability issues, displaced persons, and freedom of expression.
All these issues remain extremely important today, and unfortunately they're under threat under the current regime.
So I think it's important that eight years on, the U.S. and other countries don't lose sight of Iraq, and I fear that's what's been happening, is that U.S. policymakers and others are looking at Afghanistan and Yemen.
They're looking away from Iraq, and even though the mission has not been accomplished, at least from a human rights perspective in Iraq.
Well, now I wonder if you can comment on the different studies of what they call the excess deaths in Iraq, and that is comparing the rate of death basically to what it was before the invasion, which would still be under the era of the blockade, in which it's reported that as many as a million people were killed simply from that.
But according to opinion business research in Great Britain, and it seemed to be in line with the Lancet and Johns Hopkins studies of the excess deaths, the increased death rate, these guys are reporting that a million Iraqis who otherwise would not have died, whether directly in violence or as a result of a checkpoint between them and a hospital or what have you, lack of potable water, et cetera, since 2003.
Does Human Rights Watch have an opinion officially about what you guys say the number of excess deaths is?
No.
I mean, we haven't looked at that specifically since we're not equipped to do a survey of that nature.
Well, we do see, I mean, death is one aspect of it, but unfortunately, I mean, it's not just people who have died, it's people who are also still living in Iraq and the complications that have happened since 2003.
I mean, there wasn't really an active extremist organization operating in Iraq before 2003.
There wasn't Al-Qaeda, there wasn't these extremist groups who are now targeting minority communities with a vengeance, who are bombing media bureaus and who are also targeting women and other people.
So it's so much worse than just looking at how many people have died.
It's also the effects on those who are struggling today.
Right.
I mean, what we really had was a chain of dominoes of displacement.
They say four million plus, four and a half million refugees, internal and external, some of them in Syria and Jordan, others just displaced in Iraq.
But Shia cleansed from the Anbar province in response from Sunnis being purged from areas in Baghdad and having to go fill that space.
And, of course, Arabs being expelled from Kirkuk under the authority of the Kurds up there.
And there's been a lot of quote-unquote cleansing by different private and official forces this whole time under the American occupation.
And, you know, even though the violence of 2006 and 2007 has decreased and we don't see the same type of sectarian war that's been happening, the effects of that horrific two years are still present.
I mean, you have more than a million and a half people displaced just from 2006 and 2007 in Iraq.
And I was there last week.
We went to this community in Taji, and this is in Baghdad, and there's about 300 families living on a garbage dump.
And, you know, I've been to many places around the world, and I've never seen anything like this before in a country that's so rich in resources, to have people actually living in a dump and, you know, with knees up to their ankles.
The kids have no access to education or health care.
It's just a tragic situation that, unfortunately, Iraq is unable to deal with by itself, given the magnitude of the problem.
And it is something that the Shasha community really has to help, especially since this is an issue that, you know, wasn't there before the invasion.
Well, you know, there was a time, I guess, in 2008, when they were really riding high on oil revenues and promising everybody who worked for the government these giant salaries and all this kinds of stuff.
And, you know, $4 a gallon oil, I forgot what the price was in barrels.
But anyway, it was really high.
And then, of course, the price collapsed with the recession.
But it's raising back up again, and it seems like even a government can distribute some of these oil resources to the ends of, you know, finally restoring electricity and clean water and, you know, bribing people to stop fighting for a little while and these sorts of things that a government's got to be able to do, right?
I mean, that's one thing Iraq really does have going for it is bazillions of dollars' worth of oil.
Well, there needs to be a national strategy to deal with the displaced persons and either to sort of bring them back to the communities they were displaced from voluntarily or integrate them in the communities that they're in now.
And even though these promises to help the displaced persons have continually been made, when you go there and interview people on the ground, so many of them have never seen any handouts from the government or any help from the government.
They mainly rely on NGOs and their neighbors.
All that money just goes to Swiss bank accounts or what?
You know, it's hard to say where it ends up.
Unfortunately, Iraq is pretty high in the index in terms of corruption.
And, unfortunately, a lot of the money that's supposed to be going to helping people, you know, never makes it there.
But it's a terrible situation for not only displaced persons but also for other communities as well.
Well, now, Patrick Coburn says that Baghdad is still within the top three most dangerous cities in the world, right there with Kabul and worse than Kabul, he says, and parallel basically only with Mogadishu, which, of course, both of those cities are in theaters of America's wars as well, it shouldn't go without saying.
Yeah, I mean, we, I was there, like I mentioned, just last week.
And, unfortunately, whenever we go back to Baghdad, it looks the same in terms of the T-walls that are up and the security measures that are in place and the checkpoints.
And it's sad that whenever we go back, there's been no change in not only the security situation but also in terms of the governments and how things are working out on the ground.
But it is, it's a challenging place to operate.
I think this is perhaps why, you know, media aren't able to, international media aren't able to sort of circulate, especially outside of the capital.
And, unfortunately, it's, we don't really know what's happening in many areas of the country because there isn't the same presence given the security situation.
And it's something that hopefully will be getting better, but it's hard to say.
I'm an optimist, and I hope that after such a horrific period of conflict that Baghdad will settle down a bit and people will be able to sort of go on and live somewhat normal lives.
But, for the most part, security is very precarious there.
And we keep seeing spectacular attacks continuing.
The week before we arrived, there was a series of attacks against different communities.
And, at any point, you can have another devastating, spectacular attack.
Yeah, well, and I think there was just a major bombing yesterday in Iraq as well, wasn't there?
Yeah, there was.
And, I mean, this is, you know, even though these things happen, unfortunately, it's not a media story anymore.
Anywhere else in the world, if you had attacks of these types where, you know, dozens of people are being killed, it would be front-page headlines.
But, in Iraq, it's kind of become business as usual, and it's no longer news.
Yeah, as you said, you know, the American people, especially those in the media, they just want to forget this whole thing ever happened.
That was some previous era.
It might as well have been the Eisenhower era or something.
We're past that chapter of whatever.
We don't have to care about that.
The page of history has turned or whatever.
Some nonsense has made it that Iraq doesn't matter anymore.
Yeah, and it matters more than ever because I think right now we're at a critical juncture in Iraq's future, we're at a crossroads, and whether Iraq will sort of continue on the road to democracy or whether it will fall back to being a police state is critical right now.
Well, I sure hope that the information that you guys are bringing to light there at Human Rights Watch can be put to good use and that some accountability for these tortures can be found and their prisoners freed from such circumstances.
It's heroic work, and I thank you very much for it and your time on the show today.
Thank you so much for having me.
Everybody, that's Samer Muscati, HumanRightsWatch.org.
See you Monday.
