HRW: Iraqi survivors of US torture and abuse await redress, 20 years on

Twenty years on, the United States has failed to provide compensation or redress to those who suffered torture and abuse at the US-run Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Iraq, Human Rights Watch has said.

"Iraqis who were tortured by US personnel still have no clear path for filing a claim or receiving any kind of redress or recognition from the US government," Sarah Yager, Washington director at Human Rights Watch, said in the report published on Monday.

"US officials have indicated that they prefer to leave torture in the past, but the long-term effects of torture are still a daily reality for many Iraqis and their families."

After the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the US and its coalition allies held about 100,000 Iraqis between 2003 and 2009.

Human Rights Watch and other organisations have recorded several instances of torture and mistreatment carried out by US forces in Iraq.

Individuals who have endured such abuse have shared their experiences over the years, yet their claims have received minimal acknowledgement from the US government, and no compensation or redress have been provided.

Prohibitions against torture, as stipulated by US domestic law, the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the United Nations Convention Against Torture, and customary international law, are "unequivocal and absolute", the report said.

Humiliation, abuse and torture

The rights group interviewed people including Taleb al Majli, a former detainee who said he was in a widely reported photograph that showed US soldiers piling naked, hooded prisoners in a human pyramid at Abu Ghraib.

Al Majli said he was sexually humiliated and abused with dogs and water hoses. He said he was released after 16 months without charge but kept biting his hands and wrists to cope with trauma, leaving such scars that he can no longer wear short sleeves.

"This one year and four months changed my entire being for the worse. It destroyed me and destroyed my family," he told the rights group.

At least 11 US soldiers were convicted of abuses at Abu Ghraib but critics say the punishments were light and that no one in higher authority was prosecuted.

Human Rights Watch said it could find no legal pathway for Abu Ghraib victims to receive compensation, either through the US or Iraqi systems.

"The US should provide compensation, recognition and official apologies to survivors of abuse and their families," Yager said.

Human Rights Watch cited a 2004 finding by the International Committee of the Red Cross that said US-led coalition military intelligence estimated that 70 to 90 percent of people arrested had been taken by mistake.

President Barack Obama, a critic of the Iraq war elected in 2008, vowed that the United States would not "torture" but decided not to seek accountability against officials in the previous administration of George W. Bush.

Due to a law passed by Congress, the US similarly has not compensated prisoners released from Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.