What role is the Human Rights Ministry playing in combating torture in prisons?
Samer: I have to give credit to the Human Rights Ministry especially on this issue. They have an excellent monitoring system of detainees where they actually have a committee that goes to facilities to look at issues of torture and investigate claims of torture. Once they realized this facility at Muthanna existed, the Ministry launched two investigations, one by the minister herself. What they found was consistent with what we found, as well. They documented the torture and sodomy and horrible things that happened and presented the findings to the Prime Minister. There’s an effective mechanism to monitor this within the government itself. The problem was that what the ministry found wasn’t respected by other government officials and they haven’t taken steps to investigate or prosecute those involved with this facility. From what we understand, since the committee that does these prison visits filed their last controversial report, they haven’t been able to continue doing visits. Their
