US denies UN access to Iraq jails

Source: alalam.ir, 11-03-2008
GENEVA-The UN investigator on torture said on Tuesday the United States had denied his request to visit US-run jails in Iraq.
Manfred Nowak, United Nations special rapporteur on torture, said he had received information on the situation of US detention facilities in recent years, but stressed only a visit would allow him to verify them.
An international outcry erupted in 2004 after images of prisoner abuse by US military personnel at Abu Ghraib west of Baghdad, including naked detainees stacked in a pyramid and others cowering before snarling dogs, became public.
"I was a little astonished that the US government is not willing to grant me access," Nowak told a news briefing in Geneva.
Nowak, who has an Iraqi government invitation for his Oct 18-26 planned visit, said he would also expect full access to Iraqi-run detention facilities, although this was still under negotiation. British authorities have agreed to allow him to visit their detainees in Iraq, he added.
At least 30,000 prisoners are held by Iraqi authorities, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross which made its first visit to security detainees held by Iraq's central government last October.
The Red Cross still seeks a wider agreement for access to all prisoners held by Iraq.
Nowak also voiced dismay at President George W. Bush's veto last Saturday of legislation passed by Congress that would have banned the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from using waterboarding.
"I think that the (US) government wishes to maintain certain positions of principle which they have taken at the beginning of the so-called war on terror, and if they now would take them back as a government, they would kind of admit that what they had done in the past was wrong," he said.