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Iraq said to illegally hold many women

Group details tortures, threats

BAGHDAD — Iraqi authorities are illegally detaining thousands of women — subjecting many to torture and the threat of sexual abuse — despite promises of reform, Human Rights Watch said Thursday.

The findings by the New York-based group raise new concerns about Iraq’s ability to handle those detained in security sweeps targeting militants amid an escalation in violence. International rights groups are worried about the weakness of the Iraqi judicial system, saying it is plagued with corruption.

Human Rights Watch said women have been held for months or years without charges before seeing a judge. Many were rounded up for alleged terrorist activities involving male family members.

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Detainees who were interviewed described being kicked, slapped, raped, or threatened with sexual assault by security forces.

‘‘Iraqi security forces and officials act as if brutally abusing women will make the country safer,’’ said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. ‘‘In fact, these women and their relatives have told us that as long as security forces abuse people with impunity, we can only expect security conditions to worsen.’’

Militants have frequently cited mistreatment of women as justification for their attacks.

Human Rights Watch also called on Iraq to acknowledge the prevalence of abuse, investigate allegations of torture and ill treatment, and urgently make judicial and security sector reforms.

It said senior Iraqi officials dismissed reports of abuse of women in detention as exceptional cases. Government and judicial officials did not return phone calls seeking further comment on the report.

One detainee entered her interview with the group in Iraq’s death row facility in Baghdad on crutches, saying that nine days of beatings, shocks, and being hung upside down had left her permanently disabled.

The woman said she had been arrested by US and Iraqi forces in January 2010 in her cousin’s home. She said she was taken to the Interior Ministry’s Criminal Investigations Department, where she was tortured until she confessed to terrorism charges against her will.

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She said Iraqi security forces called her derogatory names. She said they handcuffed her, forced her to kneel, and beat her on her face, breaking her jaw. When she refused to sign confessions, they attached wires to her handcuffs and fingers.

‘‘When they first put the electricity on me, I gasped; my body went rigid and the bag came off my head,’’ she was quoted by the report as saying. ‘‘I saw a green machine, the size of a car battery, with wires attached to it.’’

She then signed and fingerprinted a blank piece of paper after officers told her they had detained her teenage daughter and would rape her. She says her lawyer later told her she was accused of blowing up a house and other attacks.

The woman was executed seven months after meeting with Human Rights Watch, in September 2013, despite lower court rulings that dismissed some of the charges against her.

The report, titled ‘‘No One Is Safe: Abuses of Women in Iraq’s Criminal Justice System,’’ was based on interviews with 27 women and seven girls in custody between December 2012 and April 2013, as well as their families, lawyers, medical officials in detention centers, Iraqi officials, activists, and the United Nations.

The release of detained women was one of the main demands of demonstrators who protested throughout Sunni areas in Iraq for most of last year.

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