This came out
yesterday. [I looked back through ~150 diaries, apologies if this has been posted before.]
Abdul-Basat al-Turki, minister of human rights in the Iraqi government, told the Arab satellite-TV station Al Jazeera he had resigned "not only because I believe that the use of violence is a violation of human rights, but also because these methods in the prisons means that the violations are a common act."
Mr. al-Turki said he had complained in December about human rights violations by Americans to the top U.S. administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer. He did not say what had come of the complaints.
This isn't the only indication that these abuses were widespread... [MORE]
In addition to the May 1 Mirror article which quoted soldiers as saying the treatment was common, you get the same from a
Flashpoints reporter in Iraq May 3-4. The British troops who supplied the photos printed in the Mirror said that abuse of Iraqis was a major reason for the backlash against the Coalition. Dahr Jamail of Flashpoints says that he has interviewed Iraqis and that abuse is well known. Jamail describes two particular incidents. In one, a family retrieved a male relative's body ten days after he died in prison (it was their first official word of where he'd been in prison). In the second, a prisoner was released to an Iraqi prison in a coma; his body had evidence of beating, cigarette burns, and electrical burns on areas including his penis.
Free Speech Radio Newstoday had compelling interviews from Iraqis outside Abu Ghraib prison. One woman said she didn't know where her son was imprisoned, and that she had sold all of her possessions to travel to all of the prisons in Iraq in search of him.