In Iraq, jailed women tell of abuse

Sad, tired eyes peer out from behind the bars of Kadhimiya Prison. The pleas are desperate: "I swear I am innocent." "The criminal investigators raped us." "I have been here eight months and I have not seen a judge." Nearly 200 women, some with their toddlers and infants living with them in their cells, are imprisoned in Baghdad's only detention facility for women. Suspected killers bunk with women charged with petty crimes. Some don't know why they were arrested. "We consider all of them innocent -- innocent until proven guilty," said Abdul Qadir, legal advisor to Iraqi Vice President Tariq Hashimi. "They have constitutional rights that should uphold their treatment." But in a country mired in corruption, the protection of constitutional rights is elusive. Some women report that their lawyers have been shot and killed en route to the prison. Others say judges have been bribed. A Los Angeles Times review of nearly three hours of video -- shot inside the prison and provided by Hashimi, who is leading a call for protecting prisoners' rights and establishing a credible justice system -- suggests the problems are deep-rooted and systemic. Tales of injustice and inhumane treatment are plentiful in letters from female inmates, and evidence gathered by members of parliament and human rights activists indicates that the problems begin from the moment a woman is detained. "This is not acceptable in any war in any time," inmate Suad Aziz Abbas, a former elementary school principal with 30 years of government service, says in one of the videos. She and her daughter, a college student and newlywed, were charged with murder, convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Their arrests came as Abbas was searching for her only son, an oil engineer, who went missing in 2004. She had sought help from the Human Rights Ministry and elsewhere, she said, to no avail. One woman told Hashimi she confessed to murder because she was tortured by investigators. "They threatened to rape me," she said. "They stripped me naked and they tortured me with electricity and other devices. I admitted it after all this torture." More often than not, the women have little recourse, said Hania Mufti of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq. "There are numerous complaints and little action," she said. "There still remains very little political will to hold people criminally liable on torture." In the rare cases in which action is taken, Mufti said, the punishment is administrative, not criminal, such as a suspension or termination of police officials or prison guards. Under the Iraqi Constitution, detainees must see a judge within 24 hours of their arrest. During that hearing, a judge determines whether to move forward with the charges and the investigation process begins. But it is routinely months or longer before a woman faces a judge to learn her charges, and there are no consequences for missing the 24-hour window. One detainee said she had been imprisoned for four years without her case going to court, said Amal Qadhi, a member of parliament. "Her case was theft," Qadhi said. "She was about 25 years old and she committed five suicide attempts because she had been waiting there for far too long."