Iraq operating 'secret prison': Human Rights Watch: "Security forces linked to Iraqi premier Nuri al-Maliki are operating a 'secret detention site' and elite teams are torturing detainees at a separate facility, Human Rights Watch charged on Tuesday.
The New York-based watchdog's claims come a week after the Los Angeles Times reported some detainees at a prison in the Iraqi capital's heavily fortified Green Zone had been abused and held without charge for up to two years, charges Baghdad denies.
HRW said that in late November, Iraqi authorities moved nearly 300 detainees to a secret site within a military base known as Camp Justice in the Kadhimiyah neighbourhood of north Baghdad, citing interviews it had conducted and classified government documents it obtained."
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In his recent address to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals summit, US President Barack Obama referred to development as a "strategic and economic imperative". Speaking at the same summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel repeated the mantra "no development without security and no security without development."
The common point made is that development aid programs are not purely altruistic and humanitarian, but also carry a real benefit for the donor nations. Poverty, mass (especially youth) unemployment, and hunger are prime breeding grounds for radical ideologies. Extremist organizations, criminal cartels and even terrorist groups can buy themselves safe havens and loyalty by providing basic services where local (and foreign) governments fail to step in. The rise of Hezbollah in Lebanon is but one example. And undemocratic nations can coopt or undermine poor neighbors in the same way.
