Torture In Iraq

Now Worse Than It Was Under Saddam

Manfred Nowak, the UN's chief anti-torture expert, captured the headlines round the world when he suggested that torture could be worse in Iraq now than it was under Saddam Hussein.

Everyone, it seems, from the Iraqi forces to the militias to the anti-US insurgents, now routinely use torture on the people they kill.

Each day, bodies are found with appalling injuries, particularly in Baghdad.

At the Baghdad mortuary, I was told that more bodies now showed signs of torture than of a clean death.

The US Department of Defense has now provided another measure of the problem it faces. Its latest opinion poll carried out in Iraq indicates that, among the five million Sunni Muslims there, about 75% now support the armed insurgency against the coalition.

This compares with 14% in the first opinion poll the Defense Department carried out back in 2003. It is a catastrophic loss of support,

The rise in hostility to the US forces is clearly linked to the onslaught against the town of Falluja in 2004.

This was ordered directly by the White House and the Department of Defense after the bodies of four American defence contractors were hung from a bridge in April 2004.