Iraqi Official, Now Awaiting Execution, Says U.S. Tortured Him

[swag]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aDPEj88dD0vo&refer=home

Feb. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Former Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, now awaiting execution, said in a sworn statement that he was tortured by U.S. personnel for three weeks after his 2003 arrest, according to a copy of the document made available by his lawyer.

According to the statement, dated March 22, 2006, and handwritten in Arabic, Ramadan said ``methods of torture'' were used against him after he failed to provide information on the whereabouts of deposed President Saddam Hussein while he was in hiding, or on the Iraqi resistance. The statement said Ramadan was held in a compound at the Baghdad airport, where he was kicked, beaten with an aluminum pipe and given limited access to water and a bathroom for 20 days.

``If these allegations are true, then the U.S. should set up an independent investigation,'' said Said Boumedouha, a London- based Middle East researcher for Amnesty International, an international human-rights organization. ``How can you say this trial was fair if some of the people were ill-treated or tortured before they were brought to court?''

Ramadan's co-defendants Hussein, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and Awad Hamed al-Bandar have already been executed by hanging. Ramadan was initially sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in the 1982 killing of 148 Shiite Muslims in the village of Dujail. An appeals court on Feb. 12 ruled the sentence too lenient and ordered his execution.

A U.S. Defense Department spokesman, Army Colonel Gary Keck, said in Washington that he couldn't comment on Ramadan's allegations because of the possibility that they were the subject of an investigation by U.S. personnel. There was no immediate comment at the White House.

. . .