Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Women and children imprisoned in Iraq without cause

This article from the CSMonitor cannot be ignored:
In some cases, the women were being interrogated as possible suspects, but in others they were being used to try to extract confessions from their husbands. Using threats against women to elicit confessions from male relatives is a practice well-documented by rights groups.

"Four days ago when one of the men wouldn't confess they said, 'Bring in his wife.' They put her in a separate room nearby and beat her so he could hear her screaming," says the witness. "They went back to the man and said, 'We will rape her if you don't confess.' "
Now, I really have no problem with women being held as prisoners if they're suspected of crimes. But this article describes a prison operated by the Iraqis (who run some joint operations with American troops) where family members of suspects are being arrested and held as leverage to get confessions. I shudder to think this is what we're leaving behind us as we exit the country.

2 comments:

  1. This is really, really sad. What are we fighting for if we've replaced one brutal regime that violates human rights with another?

    ReplyDelete
  2. How disgusting is it that these guards can actually perform rape on demand

    ReplyDelete

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