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Exclusive: Former UN Human Rights Chief in Iraq Says US Violating Geneva Conventions, Jailing Innocent Detainees
In his first interview since returning from Iraq, John Pace, the human rights chief for the the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq, reacts to the mass killings on the ground. Pace says he believes the U.S. has violated the Geneva Conventions, is fueling the violence through its raids on Iraqi homes and is holding thousands of detainees that are for the most part innocent of any crimes.

First broadcast - Democracy Now! - 02/28/06

The Washington Post is reporting 1,300 Iraqis have died over the past week making this one of the bloodiest periods since the U.S. invaded the country nearly three years ago. The mass killings began on Wednesday after a bomb destroyed the gold dome of the Askariya shrine in Samarra - one of the holiest sites to Shiite Muslims.

While the bloodshed appears to have at least temporarily subsided, the outbreak of violence last week has raised new concerns about where Iraq is headed. Most of those killed in the past week did not die in roadside bombings or suicide attacks but at the hands of militias and death squads including some units working out of the Ministry of the Interior.

The Washington Post published this dispatch out of Baghdad: "Hundreds of unclaimed dead lay at the morgue at midday Monday -- blood-caked men who had been shot, knifed, garroted or apparently suffocated by the plastic bags still over their heads. Many of the bodies were sprawled with their hands still bound." Meanwhile the Independent of London is reporting that hundreds of Iraqis are being tortured to death or summarily executed every month in Baghdad by death squads working out of the Ministry of the Interior.

• John Pace, Former U.N. Human Rights Chief, Iraq. Up until earlier this month he was the human rights chief for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq. He has worked at the United Nations since 1966 and is the former Secretary to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. He joins us on the phone from his home in Sydney Australia.

AMY GOODMAN: It is his first broadcast interview since he left Iraq. We welcome you to Democracy Now!

JOHN PACE: Thank you very much Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: It is good to have you with us. First, your reaction to what has taken place in these last few days in Iraq.

JOHN PACE: Well, I'm not surprised at all, as a matter of fact, because we have been trying to explain to the world at large that there has been a generalized deterioration in the situation of protection of people in Iraq. There is a breakdown of law and order which is characterized by, technically by the nonfunctioning of the police, of the judiciary, and of the penitentiary institutions. Not to mention the military intervention and the various other factors that provoke a breakdown in protection in Baghdad and most of the country. So I think it is a problem related to the relay of accurate information on the -- how serious the situation is in regard to the person in the street in Iraq. The ordinary Iraqi. Who has absolutely no protection whatsoever from the state or from the authorities.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the role of militias in Iraq?

JOHN PACE: Well, you know, they first started as a kind of militia, sort of organized armed groups, which were the military wing of various factions. And they have -- they had a considerable role to play in the vacuum that was created by the invasion. With the procedure for the transition of re-integration of the country to more representative forms of government, a number of these militias who were armed wings of political entities found themselves in government. And, therefore, they -- many of them now, are actually acting as official police agents as a part of the Ministry of Interior.

Regrettably, they have not -- they have not assumed technical responsibility on behalf of the state. They have continued to act on behalf of the factions, as it were. And so many or a large number of the – nonofficial armed groups have now become official police persons. With the results that the good policemen—the good technical police people the residue of those that remained after the rest have been fired -- after the invasion are unable to do the job properly. There's only one or two brigades of them. The others are all made up of militias in police uniform. And regrettably the minister of interior, at least up to now, was himself head of one of the main militias. And regrettably he has not led the police force to, at least under his command, in order to assume a more technical police protection. So you have these militias now with police gear and under police insignia basically carrying out an agenda which really is not in the interest of the country as a whole. They have roadblocks in Baghdad and other areas, they would kidnap in other people. They have been very closely linked with numerous mass executions, at least mass arrests of people who later turned up showing signs of some execution. And so they constitute a major destabilizing factor in the sense that they are responsible for a large degree of the lack of protection of Iraqis in their own country.

Another destabilizing factor, if I may, is the continuation of the military intervention in the Anbar region where you have military force applied to civilian areas for the announced purpose of hunting down terrorists or other opponents. Resulting in massive displacement and lack and destruction of civilian infrastructure and arrests of large numbers of mainly males in -- of a certain age group. The role of the militias, as I have described them, the role of the military intervention, are two major factors that are contributing to a current sense of instability in the country as a whole. We have also the—this instability is characterized by the massive degree of-- two other factors. One is the kidnapping. Ranging between 122 and 158 days of persons who range from school kids to very wealthy people being kidnapped. And the other is the fact that nobody really has any alternative except to seek to defend himself or herself by their own means. So that in turn provokes more lawlessness. Because tribes, clans, religious groups, subgroups, take the law into their own hands. There is a vacuum at the level of the responsibility of the state to protect its citizens. That is really the cause of this problem.

AMY GOODMAN: We are talking to --

JOHN PACE: My observation has been certainly there are sectarian aspects to the conflict that's going on. But in my view, at least result from my observation, the sectarian aspect is only a result of the main cause. And main cause is the total breakdown in any kind of law and order. Forget about rule of law. Law and order around the country.

AMY GOODMAN: We have to break stations to identify themselves. We will be back with John Pace in a minute. [break]

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