Monday, 2 December, 2002, 12:50 GMT

A dossier of human rights abuses allegedly perpetrated by the Iraqi regime, including torture and rape, has been released by the UK Government.

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the report was needed so "people understand the comprehensive evil that is Saddam Hussein".

It comes as United Nations weapons inspectors were carrying out a surprise inspection at a plant in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

The dossier says Iraq "is a terrifying place to live" with "fear Saddam's chosen method for staying in power".

"Torture is systematic in Iraq. The most senior figures in the regime are personally involved," the dossier begins.

However, human rights organisation Amnesty International has criticised the timing of the dossier's publication, saying ministers are exploiting the issues to justify their own ends.

In London British comedian Mark Thomas joined a protest against a war on Iraq.

The report contains graphic first-hand accounts by Iraqi victims of the type of brutality they claim to have encountered, as well as intelligence material and evidence from aid charities in the region.

This document is merely a distraction from a much wider problem

It details the Iraqi regime's alleged methods of torture, including eye gouging, piercing of hands with drills and acid baths and accuses Saddam Hussein of introducing severe penalties like cutting off ears and tongue amputation for criminal offences and speaking out against him.

Women are allegedly raped, tortured and summarily executed. Prisoners at one jail are said to have been kept in steel boxes like those found in mortuaries with only half an hour a day allowed for light and air.

The report concludes by describing the Iraqi leader as "ruthless", adding: "A cruel and callous disregard for human life and suffering remains the hallmark of his regime."

'Systematic terror'

The dossier was launched six days before Baghdad must submit a full declaration of its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, or face "serious consequences" under United Nations resolution 1441.

Mr Straw said it was "worth reinforcing the case" that human rights abuses in Iraq have happened in the past and "they are happening today".

"We are publishing this because it is important that people understand the comprehensive evil that is Saddam Hussein," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"He has got these weapons of mass destruction, chemical, biological and probably nuclear weapons which he has used in the past against his own people as well as his neighbours and could almost certainly use again in the future.

"In addition to that, there's the systematic terror which is perpetrated by Saddam on a daily basis against his own people, which is why there is this most unusual and outrageous political system which simply goes back to one person.

"The only person worth dealing with is Saddam, because everybody else, including his own cabinet, are in mortal fear."

Publication of the dossier is a move by the government to gain public support for war on Iraq if the regime fails to comply with the resolution, said BBC diplomatic correspondent James Robbins.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the document made "harrowing" reading, and was "a political document intended to achieve a particular political effect."

Peaceful solution

But Britain's spokesman on Iraq denied the report was intended to build a case for military action against Iraq.

Speaking in the Jordanian capital Amman on Sunday, Mark Sedwill said: "There is a strong impression around in the Middle East that Britain has a desire to prepare for military action on Iraq. It isn't so.

"We want a peaceful way out of this."

Amnesty International secretary general Irene Khan disagreed.

She said: "This selective attention to human rights is nothing but a cold and calculated manipulation of the work of human rights activists.

"Let us not forget that these same governments turned a blind eye to Amnesty International's reports of widespread human rights violations in Iraq before the Gulf War.

"They remained silent when thousands of unarmed Kurdish civilians were killed in Halabja in 1988."

A team of UN weapons inspectors has been in Iraq since last Wednesday examining suspected arms sites.

The UN team has so far been allowed unfettered access to suspected weapons sites and so far nothing incriminating has been found.

Link to document at this site.

-- Anonymous, December 02, 2002

Answers

SADDAM'S IRAQ HELL ON EARTH By NILES LATHEM

December 3, 2002 --

WASHINGTON - A horrifying dossier of the systematic rape, torture and executions of Saddam Hussein's political rivals was released by the British government yesterday in the latest bid to win international support for war against Iraq.

The chilling 23-page report is based on the findings of intelligence agencies and human-rights organizations, as well as tales from survivors.

It gives gruesome details of the atrocities being carried out in underground prisons throughout Iraq.

"Iraq is a terrifying place to be," said the report released by the British Foreign Office, noting that 4 million people, roughly 15 percent of the population, had fled Iraq.

"A cruel and callous disregard of human life and suffering remains the hallmark of Saddam's regime."

The report said widespread methods of treatment of Saddam's opponents include eye-gouging, piercing hands with electric drills, lowering prisoners into vats of acid, staging mock execution and repeated raping of women.

It also described a vicious method of torture known as falaqa, in which victims are beaten on the soles of their feet with a cable until they pass out.

Also contained in the report, titled "Saddam Hussein: Crimes and Human Rights Abuses," are:

* A government personnel card of a "fighter in the Iraqi popular army" named Aziz Salih Ahmed, who listed his official occupation as professional rapist or "violator of women's honor."

* A March 6, 1991, order from Baghdad Security Headquarters to officials in outlying provinces instructing them to "kill 95 percent" of any crowd of demonstrators - leaving the remaining 5 percent for interrogation.

* The tragic case of Najar Mohammed Haydar, a Baghdad obstetrician, who was beheaded in October 2000 on charges of prostitution. Her real crime: speaking out against corruption in Iraqi health care system.

* New eyewitness details about the Sijn al-Tarbut or "casket prison" - a ghastly underground structure operated by Saddam's elite Republican Guard in Baghdad, where victims are held in coffin-like rectangular steel boxes and are allowed out for only a half-hour each day.

* The story of Um Haydar, a 25-year-old woman who was dragged from her house and publicly beheaded in 2001 after her husband, suspected by the authorities of involvement in armed opposition activities, fled Iraq. Guards took away her children and mother-in-law, and they have not been heard from since, the dossier said.

The report was released just six days before the U.N. deadline for Iraq to catalog its weapons of mass destruction or face being charged with "material breach" of Security Council resolutions, which could lead to massive U.S. military action.

"The aim is to reveal that the abuses of the Iraqi regime extend far beyond its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and the violations of its international obligations," British Foreign Minister Jack Straw said in a speech yesterday.

"By disarming Iraq, we not only help those countries in the region which are subject to Iraqi threats, we also deprive Saddam of his most powerful tools for keeping the Iraqi people living in fear and subjugation," he added.

Some left-wing British groups and political opponents of the government criticized the timing of the release, calling the dossier an attempt to whip up emotions and jingoism during this critical pre-war period.

"I think that this highly unusual, indeed unprecedented publication, is cranking up for war," said Tam Dalyell, a Labor Party member of Parliament.

-- Anonymous, December 03, 2002

The report certainly puts Saddam's sympathizers in a different light, doesn't it?

An actual card carrying rapist. How would he use that card? As an ID to get into the interrogation area? Discounts at TortureTools-R-Us?

-- Anonymous, December 03, 2002