IRAQ: Mass Arrests, Incommunicado Detentions

(Erbil, May 13, 2012) -- Iraq's government has been carrying out mass arrests and unlawfully detaining people in the notorious camp Honor facility in Baghdad's Green Zone, Human Rights Watch said today, based on numerous interviews with victims, witnesses, family members and government officials. The government had claimed a year ago that it had closed the prison, where Human Rights Watch had documented rampant torture.Since October 2011, Iraqi authorities have conducted several waves of detentions, one of which arresting officers and officials termed 'precautionary.' Numerous witnesses told Human Rights Watch that security forces have typically surrounded neighborhoods in Baghdad and other provinces and gone door-to-door with long lists of names of people they wanted to detain. The government has held hundreds of detainees for months, refusing to disclose the number of those detained, their identities, any charges against them, and where they are being held.