Prison torture common in Mideast, surveys find

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The scandal over abuse at a U.S. military prison in Iraq is unfolding in a region where governments routinely employ torture, psychological abuse and secret detentions of common prisoners and political detainees, according to numerous U.S., U.N. and private surveys.

Human rights activists say the long history of prisoner abuse and torture in the region makes the images of American troops at Abu Ghraib prison physically and sexually humiliating Iraqi prisoners all the more devastating to the campaign to improve civil liberties and government accountability across the Middle East.

"People in the Middle East relied on the United States to be the lead nation opposed to this kind of treatment," said Tom Malinowski, advocacy director for the Washington office of Human Rights Watch.

"The people who are feeling the most fear about [Abu Ghraib] are the people sitting in prison cells in Saudi Arabia and Egypt," he said.

Abderrahim Sabir, U.S. spokesman for the Paris-based Arab Commission for Human Rights, said the revelations coming out of Abu Ghraib prison will have "tremendous negative effects" on efforts to combat much larger systematic abuses in other countries in the region.

"Just in terms of lobbying other countries over prisoner treatment, torture and fair trials, the United States is simply not going to be able to do that for now," said Mr. Sabir, formerly head of North African affairs for Amnesty International.

Human rights activists have long chronicled examples of judicial abuse and prisoner torture in the region.

In Egypt, torture of detainees "in recent years had become epidemic," according to a lengthy Human Rights Watch investigation published in February.

Methods of torture include "beatings with fists, feet, and leather straps, sticks and electric cables; suspension in contorted and painful positions accompanied by beatings; the application of electric shocks; and sexual intimidation and violence," the report noted.

State Department human rights reports track credible charges of torture, intimidation and prison overcrowding in numerous Middle East regimes, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, Syria and Yemen.