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| NEWS > 08 March 2006 |
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Officer, Husband Arraigned in
A pregnant police officer who was caught driving the car from which her husband had shot and wounded an undercover officer in a street confrontation was arraigned Sunday on charges including tampering with evidence, prosecutors said.
Jacqueline Melendez-Rivera, 37, was charged with obstructing governmental administration, hindering prosecution and tampering with physical evidence, said prosecutors, who accused her of trying to cover up her husband's crime by driving away his car.
Her husband, Jose Rivera, 31, was charged with attempted murder, assault and criminal possess... Read more
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New York Times - United States
08 March 2006
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U.S. Human Rights Report Criti
WASHINGTON, March 8 — Iraqi police units, often infiltrated and even dominated by members of sectarian militias, continue to be linked to arbitrary arrests and to the torture, rapes and sometimes deaths of detainees, the State Department reported today.
"The vast majority of human rights abuses reportedly carried out by government agents were attributed to the police," the department said.
The report, issued as part of the department's yearly global rights review, named North Korea, Burma, Iran, Zimbabwe, China and Cuba as being among the worst violators of human rights.
The American criticism of worsening rights conditions in Iran comes as the Bush administration has been pressing Tehran in increasingly forceful terms to curb its nuclear ambitions.
The human rights report also described serious problems in countries with close American ties, including flawed elections in Egypt, beatings and arbitrary arrests in Saudi Arabia, and floggings in the United Arab Emirates.
The report said that repression in China had worsened, with "increased harassment, detention and imprisonment" of government critics, heightened media censorship and sometimes violent suppression of protests. Over all, it said, the Chinese record "remained poor."
That critique might prove sensitive as President Hu Jintao is set to visit the White House next month.
The department is not mandated to review American human rights abuses, and the report made no direct mention of the controversial practice of rendition — sending terror detainees to third countries for questioning.
The rights group Amnesty International assailed the report today for what it said was this "glaring omission."
Amnesty noted that the report criticized detainee treatment in Egypt and Jordan, countries to which the United States reportedly has sent detainees for interrogation.
For example, in Jordan, the report said, "The most frequently reported methods of torture included beating, sleep deprivation, extended solitary confinement and physical suspension."
The annual review credited two European countries reportedly linked to secret C.I.A. detention centers, Poland and Romania, as having attempted to address human rights concerns. But it said Romanian police had mistreated detainees.
Barry Lowenkron, assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, was asked at a news briefing about what a reporter suggested was the report's problematic treatment of rendition.
"Let me be clear," he replied, "we do not send detainees to countries if we believe that they will be subjected to torture. That has been our policy."
Asked how the Bush administration could square that assertion with its depictions of abuse in countries like Egypt and Jordan, Mr. Lowenkron replied, "It is done on a case-by-case basis."
"In some countries that do not have full democratic practices, if we get solid assurances, and if there is precedent — and we have precedented examples that have occurred — then we feel confident and we do it. If we do not, we do not do it."
But the report discussed the allegations of widespread abuses by the Iraqi police — and far less so, by the country's army — in some detail.
Police abuses, the report said, "included threats, intimidation, beatings, and suspension by the arms or legs, as well as the reported use of electric drills and cords and the application of electric shocks."
Amid a climate of extreme violence, it said, there were "reports increased of killings by the government or its agents that may have been politically motivated." Insurgents and common criminals sometimes masked their identity in police or army uniforms, undercutting public trust, the review said.
It said police units were often dominated by members of sectarian militias, including two Shiite groups, the Badr Organization and the Army of the Mahdi. These groups had sometimes abused their powers in pursuit of personal, party or sectarian goals.
The assessment thus underscored the difficulties that American forces have had in training reliable Iraqi replacements for American troops and security personnel.
It cited notable democratic progress in Iraq, including the December's election of members of a new legislature. But it also listed serious problems, including "widespread corruption at all levels of government."
Much in the review had been previously reported, but it added details and some follow-up.
It listed four serious incidents in which a total of more than 60 Iraqis had been detained by police — or others in police uniforms — and were later found dead. Investigations promised by the Interior Ministry had so far produced any results.
The report quoted a former Iraqi human rights minister, Baktiar Amin, as reporting Feb. 6, 2005, that Interior Ministry detention centers were "a theater of violations of human rights," including systematic torture.
An Interior Ministry detention center in Baghdad, the Jadiriyah Bunker, was shut down after it was found in November to contain 169 detainees, most of them Sunni Arabs, many of whom showed signs of torture.
An interagency inspection team subsequently established by the government found on Dec. 8 that a police building in Baghdad held 625 detainees "in conditions so crowded that detainees were unable to lie down at the same time." Several, according to news reports cited, showed signs of severe torture, including having fingernails torn out.
The report said that conditions in civilian prisons "significantly improved during the year."
But it added, with little elaboration, that "other detention systems existed about which little was known." This included five such centers in the Kurdish north where detainees of other ethnic backgrounds were held.
The Central Intelligence Agency is also understood to operate secretive detention centers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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