Iran linked to Iraqi Interior Ministry prison abuse - report

Iran Focus: a pro-MEK website

A top official in Iran’s notorious Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) was running the secret Iraqi Interior Ministry prison in Baghdad which was discovered this week to be one of many suspected torture centre across the country, according to an Arabic-language website.

The Saudi Arabian Ilaph website identified General Ahmad al-Mohandess, also known as Abu Mehdi Mohandess as head of the notorious detention centre which had housed more than 170 Iraqi prisoners. Al-Mohandess is one of the Iranian Intelligence Ministry's high-ranking officers, according to the report.

“When U.S. forces seized control of one of the Interior Ministry's buildings in the Jaderiya region near the official headquarters of the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq [SCIRI], led by Abdol-Aziz al-Hakim, they found prisoners who were suffering from malnutrition and on some of whose bodies, signs of torture could be seen”.

“Sources made it clear that this detention centre is run by a special group directly in contact with the Iranian Intelligence Ministry, and that there is coordination between this group and the Iraqi National Security Ministry, in which Abdul Karim al-Enzi, one of the Dawa Party leaders, has a seat”, the report said. READ MORE

It added that the National Security ministry had set up a special body for intelligence and arrests, which was directly tied to Iran's Intelligence Ministry vis-à-vis funding and organisation.

Ilaph said that its sources had linked the discovery of the secret detention centre to the sudden visit to Tehran by Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, Iraq's National Security Adviser, and his denying that the Islamic Republic was meddling in Iraq’s internal affairs. "There are no documents that prove Iran's interference in Iraq's state matters", said Rubaie while in Tehran.