UN rights commissioner calls for international inquiry into Iraqi prisons News
UN rights commissioner calls for international inquiry into Iraqi prisons

[JURIST] UN High Commissioner for Human Rights [official website] Louise Arbour Friday called for an international investigation [UNHCHR press release] into present conditions in Iraqi jails after 173 malnourished, beaten and possibly tortured detainees [JURIST report] were found in a secret Iraqi Interior Ministry [Global Security backgrounder] prison facility earlier this week. The Iraqi government has already announced plans to investigate the prisoner abuse itself, and on Thursday said it would extend the investigation to all facilities nationwide [JURIST report], but Arbour indicated that an internal governmental inquiry may not be enough:

In the light of the apparently systemic nature and magnitude of the problem, and the importance of public confidence in any inquiry, I urge the authorities to consider calling for an international inquiry. An international element would help the authorities address the problems in the system of detention in an impartial and objective way.

The mistreated detainees were found by US troops in an underground bunker near the Interior Ministry's compound in Baghdad and Sunni Arab politicians have alleged that Shiite militias are to blame. Reuters has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, murdered by Henry II's knights

On December 29, 1170, Archbishop Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by knights acting in the name of Henry II.

Becket and Henry had been entangled in a power struggle over, among other things, criminal jurisdiction over clergy. Read a contemporary account of the murder of Thomas Becket.

Texas attains US statehood

On December 29, 1845, Texas became the twenty-eighth state to join the United States of America when US President James K. Polk signed the Ordinance of Annexation. Texas had a complicated path to statehood because it had formerly been part of Mexico and then an independent republic. The US Congress passed the Annexation of the Republic of Texas Joint Resolution on March 1, 1845. Voters in Texas then approved the Ordinance of Annexation in October, before it was approved by the US Congress and signed into law by President Polk on this day in 1845. The US Supreme Court later ruled in Texas v. White that, despite its unique path to statehood, Texas did not have the right to secede from the union.