BAGHDAD — The United Nations expressed concern Tuesday about overcrowding and “grave human rights violations” of detainees in Iraqi custody — in one case, 123 men crammed into a single cell.
The warning comes as the U.S. prepares to turn over control to the Iraqis of thousands of security detainees in its custody under a new security pact.
But as overall violence declines in the country, the U.N.’s 13th report on the human rights situation in Iraq casts doubt on whether the Iraqis will be ready to take custody of more detainees properly.
“There is no secret that the (Iraqi) prisons are overcrowded and frankly not in very good condition,” U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura said.
He cited one recent example of a detention facility in which 123 detainees were crammed into a 540-square-foot cell — about the size of a studio apartment. “That’s obviously something that cannot be sustained,” he said.
Reports of widespread mistreatment and torture of detainees also continue and need more thorough investigation, he said.
“Grave human rights violations … remain unaddressed,” the report said, citing “ongoing widespread ill-treatment and torture of detainees by Iraqi law enforcement authorities, amid pervasive impunity of current and past human rights abuses.”
The report covered only the six-month period that ended in June, so the numbers of detainees included was outdated. The U.S. has released thousands since then under an amnesty program.
De Mistura, the U.N.’s special representative in Iraq, estimated Tuesday that there were now a total of 40,000 detainees, including about 15,800 being held by the U.S. military.
Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein’s notorious cousin “Chemical Ali” Hassan al-Majid received a second death sentence Tuesday, this time for crushing a Shiite uprising in the wake of Iraq’s defeat in the 1991 Gulf War.
Al-Majid already faces the gallows after being convicted for his role in the killing of tens of thousands of Kurds in a crackdown in the late 1980s.
Another defendant, former Baath party official Abdul-Ghani Abdul-Ghafur, was also sentenced to death Tuesday. He shouted, “Down with the Persian-U.S. occupation!” and “Welcome to death for the sake of Arabism and Islam” as the sentence was read.
“Shut up, you dirty Baathist,” chief judge Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa snapped, referring to Hussein’s Sunni-dominated Baath party.
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