The United States has released several thousand Iraqi prisoners into Iraqi custody despite documented evidence that Iraqi security forces have abused detainees, Amnesty International said Monday. The handover of prisoners occurred following the end of U.S. combat operations in Iraq last month.
"Iraq's security forces have been responsible for systematically violating detainees' rights and they have been permitted to do so with impunity," said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty's director for the Middle East and North Africa.
"Yet, the U.S. authorities, whose own record on detainees' rights has been so poor, have now handed over thousands of people detained by U.S. forces to face this catalogue of illegality, violence and abuse, abdicating any responsibility for their human rights."
The Amnesty report documents thousands of arbitrary detentions and beatings of detainees to obtain forced confessions. It estimated 30,000 people were being held without trial in Iraq and 10,000 of those were recently transferred from U.S. custody.
Amnesty said it believed several detainees had died, possibly as a result of what it described as torture and other ill-treatment by interrogators and prison guards. In one case, a former member of the Iraqi Special Forces died in February as a result of internal bleeding following interrogation, Amnesty said.
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