Iraq government says abuse investigation stalled by US errors News
Iraq government says abuse investigation stalled by US errors

[JURIST] The Iraqi government has said that it has been unable to complete an investigation into allegations that prisoners at an interior department facility were tortured because mistakes made by US soldiers who discovered the site tainted some of the evidence. Sources in the US investigation said that the Iraqi government has blamed the US for not securing detainee files and for mishandling evidence, allegations that the US denied. US troops discovered 169 mostly Sunni Arabs [JURIST report] in a detention facility in Baghdad earlier this month, and many of them showed signs of starvation and physical abuse. Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari [BBC profile] promised to investigate [JURIST report] the abuse and release findings within two weeks, but no results have been forthcoming [Aljazeera report]. Some in the country have accused the interior ministry with collaborating with the Badr Brigade [Wikipedia profile], an Iranian-backed Shiite militia, to detain and torture Sunni Arabs. Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr [CBS profile] has denied the charges [JURIST report] and accused the media of exaggerating the claims of torture [JURIST report]. VOA has more.

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THIS DAY @ LAW

Georgia became first US state to ban lynching

On December 20, 1893, Georgia became the first state in the Union to pass a law against lynching, making the act punishable by four years in prison. The statute was not particularly effective—read the text of the 1899 pamphlet Lynch Law in Georgia by anti-lynching activist Ida Wells-Barnett.