Quote of the day

“‘In Iraq, we are helping the long-suffering people of that country to build a decent and democratic society at the center of the Middle East.  Together we are transforming a place of torture chambers and mass graves into a nation of laws and free institutions’, so declared President George W. Bush on 7 September 2003, six months into the occupation of Iraq. And yet, on 26 March 2010, the Iraqi Ministry of Human Rights has announced that that it unearthed 84 post-Saddam mass graves in the past year alone. Also, Human Rights Watch stated in a report published just over a year ago that ‘[a]buse in detention, typically with the aim of extracting confessions, appears common’ in the new Iraq. In 2009, the US State Department itself reported that it found ‘credible reports of torture, some resulting in death’ in the Iraqi penal system.”

Zaid Al-Ali, on openDemocracy.net

UN report on US secret prisons names six in Iraq

In its most extensive study of secret detention practices to date, the UN released a 222-page report on the practice of secret detention in dozens of countries. The report was to be presented to the Human Rights Council in March but the Council has agreed to postpone the discussion until June. The detailed study conducted by four independent UN human rights experts accuses the Bush administration of utilizing practices in severe violation of international law.

Read the full post @ Amnesty’s Human Rights Now blog here.