Global Policy Forum

By Dominic Evans

Britain accused President Saddam Hussein Monday of gross human rights violations, from acid baths and eye-gouging to rape and mass execution, as it sought to harden public opinion ahead of possible war with Iraq.

Six days before a deadline for Saddam to hand over details of his alleged weapons of mass destruction, Foreign Office officials unveiled a 23-page human rights dossier outlining "the barbarity of his regime."

Three or 4 million Iraqis -- about 15 percent of the population -- had fled their homeland rather than live under his rule. Those who remained faced his "cruel and callous disregard for human life and suffering," the report said.

In Iraq's northern Kurdish region, 100,000 Kurds were killed or disappeared in 1987-88 alone, the report quoted human rights organizations as saying.

Iraq's Shi'ite Muslims, who make up more than half the population, had endured a "systematic attack" on their religious and tribal leaders. Hundreds of Shi'ite civilians died when security forces fired on a peaceful demonstration in early 1999, it said.

Political prisoners faced "inhumane and degrading" conditions, the report said. Some prisons were "cleansed" of prisoners, including the Abu Ghraib prison where 4,000 prisoners were executed in 1984.

"These grave violations of human rights are not the work of a number of overzealous individuals but the deliberate policy of the regime," the report said.

"Fear is Saddam's chosen method for staying in power."

At the Mahjar prison in central Baghdad 600-700 prisoners are split between underground cells and former dog kennels, the report said. Two large oil tanks have been built nearby to flood the prison with petrol and burn it down in an emergency.

At the "Casket Prison," prisoners are kept in rows of rectangular steel boxes until they confess or die. The boxes are opened once a day for half an hour and prisoners get no solid foods, the report said. Some prisoners survive for up to a year.

At the "Can Prison," detainees are locked in metal boxes the size of tea chests. Each box has a tap for water and a meshed floor to allow them to defecate, it said.

There was no immediate comment from the Iraqi government on the British report. Iraq has in the past rejected as lies rights allegations against it by international organizations and U.N. rights investigators.

Saddam ordered the release of all political prisoners and criminal inmates in an unprecedented amnesty last October. The surprise move was seen as an attempt to rally Iraqis behind his leadership against a possible U.S. attack.

"BETTER LATE THAN NEVER"

Human rights organizations accuse Britain of showing a belated interest in human rights abuses in Iraq, saying it steadfastly ignored them during the 1980s when Saddam was waging an eight-year war on Iran, largely supported by the West.

Washington and London now maintain that Saddam has been building and stockpiling weapons of mass destruction and have threatened war unless he surrenders them.

"I do share the concern that these should have been noticed and acted upon a long time ago," said Hussain Al-Shahristani, a former Iraqi atomic scientist unveiling the document alongside Foreign Office diplomats.

Shahristani, who said he was imprisoned by Saddam from 1979 until 1991, when he escaped from Abu Ghraib jail and fled Iraq, said he was tortured and kept in solitary confinement for 11 years for refusing to work on Iraq's military nuclear program.

The report, drawing largely from information already published by human rights organizations and academics, included a document it said was sent by the chief of security in Iraq's northern Dohuk province in March 1991, when Saddam faced uprisings in both the north and south after his Gulf War defeat.

In the event of a "hostile demonstration," troops should close off escape routes, seize the high ground and "armed force should be used in accordance with central instructions to kill 95 percent of them and to leave 5 percent for interrogation."

The instructions authorized the use of "technical means" -- a euphemism for use of chemical weapons, the report said.

Methods of torture listed in the report included eye gouging, piercing of hands with electric drills, electric shock, beatings on the soles of feet, mock executions, acid baths, extraction of finger and toe-nails, stubbing cigarettes out on prisoners' bodies, and sexual abuse.

A copy of a government personnel card shown in the report described one state employee, Aziz Salih Ahmed, as a "fighter in the popular army." His activity was given as "violator of women's honor," or a professional rapist, the report said.

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