Torture in Iraq 'worse than under Saddam'

Torture in Iraq is worse now than it was under the regime of Saddam Hussein and "is totally out of hand," according to a United Nations investigator. "The situation is so bad many people say it is worse than it has been in the times of Saddam Hussein," said Manfred Nowak, a UN special investigator on torture, at a Sept. 21 press conference in Geneva. He said government forces, private militia and terrorist groups were all involved. "You have terrorist groups, you have the military, you have police, you have these militias. There are so many people who are actually abducted, seriously tortured and finally killed," said Nowak, an Austrian law professor. "It's not just torture by the government. There are much more brutal methods of torture you'll find by private militias." Nowak also said that bodies were being discovered with very heavy and very serious torture marks. He said a mission to Iraq to investigate torture was too dangerous, but he had gathered information from interviews with people in Amman, Jordan and other sources. Nowak was in Geneva to brief the UN Human Rights council–a body that addresses human rights violations–on the situation of the United States detention facility at Guantánamo Bay. He is one of five UN human rights investigators who in February called for the closure of the camp on the grounds it was a "torture camp." The calls were rejected by the US.