96,000 Iraqis jailed without warrants during US occupation: UN

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
4 Apr 2023 20:00
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When the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances sent a delegation to visit Iraq in November 2022, it received a large number of testimonies from victims of suspected forced disappearances.

An Iraqi artist paints a mural based on the US Statue of Liberty and a widely published photograph of an abused detainee at the Abu Ghraib prison on 23 May 2004 in Baghdad, Iraq (AFP)

A United Nations report published on Tuesday stated that US-led occupation forces in Iraq jailed 96,000 Iraqis without warrants in both US- and UK-administered jails for over a decade since the 2003 invasion.

"It is alleged that detainees were arrested without a warrant for their involvement in insurgency operations, while others were 'civilians in the wrong place at the wrong time'," the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances said.

This image of a prisoner (Ali Shallal al-Qaisi) being tortured has become internationally infamous.

Take it back to the ruling of the Hooded men. This was deemed legal and allowed war criminals to get away with murder.

One ruling impacted the world. pic.twitter.com/VXBL499gVj
— Wrongful conviction (@Wrongfulconvic6) January 29, 2023

There’s literally no reason to do this to a person. The politicians responsible for torturing Iraqis in Abu Ghraib are still in power. One of the men responsible wants to be president. pic.twitter.com/86HGik90bT
— 🅹🅾️🅴🆈աrecκ ☭ (@joeywreck) March 30, 2023

The committee further noted that when it sent a delegation to visit Iraq in November 2022, it received a large number of testimonies from victims of suspected forced disappearances.

The UN estimates that between 250,000 and a million people have "disappeared" in Iraq since 1968, a period that spans the rule of Saddam Hussein, the invasion of the US and its allies, and the years of insurgency led by terror organizations, including ISIS.

According to figures from Iraq Body Count (IBC), 209,982 Iraqi civilians were killed between 2003 and 2022. 29,526 civilians were killed in 2006 alone, making it the bloodiest year for the Iraqi civilian death toll.

The medical journal The Lancet estimated civilian deaths at 600,000.

As for Iraqi national military forces and national and local police forces, 48,719 were killed in the period between March 2003 and August 2021.

The Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, an interdisciplinary think tank affiliated with Brown University, published a 27-page research paper that investigated the total costs of the US war in both Iraq and Syria, under the title Blood and Treasure: United States Budgetary costs and human costs of 20 years of war in Iraq and Syria, 2003-2023.

The estimated $2.89 trillion cost of the conflict and the over 500,000 lives lost in Iraq and Syria are both examined in the paper. Additionally, it states that this budgetary sum accounts for expenses spent up to this point, which are projected to total $1.79 trillion, as well as expenses for veterans' care through 2050.

Between 550,000 and 580,000 people have been killed in Iraq and Syria, the current theaters of the American so-called Operation Inherent Resolve, since the US invaded Iraq in 2003, according to the paper, with many more likely succumbing from indirect causes like preventable diseases.