AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL USA NEWS RELEASE
From Kuwait Information Office in Washington D.C.


Embargoed for 7:01 p.m. Eastern
Tuesday, October 2, 1990


IRAQI FORCES KILLING AND TORTURING IN KUWAIT,
SAYS AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL FACT-FINDING TEAM

Iraqi forces have tortured and executed scores of people, including boys as young as 15, since Iraq’s IN invasion of Kuwait on August 2, Amnesty International said today (Tuesday, October 2).

The human rights organization has interviewed scores of people who have fled Kuwait, and two of its representatives have just returned from Bahrain, where they talked with victims and eyewitnesses of abuses. “Their testimony builds up a horrifying picture of widespread arrests, torture under interrogation, summary executions and mass extrajudicial killings,” Amnesty International said.

Hundreds of Kuwaitis and other nationals are now believed to be in detention centers or prisons in Kuwait and Iraq. “Iraqi forces have arrested not only people suspected of armed attacks against them but men, women and children found with opposition literature, the Kuwaiti flag or photographs of the Amir of Kuwait,” Amnesty International said.

The possession of these items is said to be treated effectively as capital offenses, punishable by death.

Some people have also been arrested or killed for failing to replace photos of the Amir with those of Iraq’s President Saddam Hussain.

Detainees are being held in police stations, schools and other public buildings in Kuwait, and some have been transferred to Iraq. “Those who have been released say the Iraqi military and intelligence routinely torture detainees,” Amnesty International reported.

Some have been given electric shocks or suffered prolonged beatings to sensitive parts of their bodies. Others have had their limbs broken, their hair plucked out with pincers, their finger and toe nails pulled out, and were threatened with sexual assault or execution. “We cannot even publish more details on former torture victims, in case they or their families are identified and suffer further reprisals,” Amnesty International said.

Iraqi forces have reportedly killed scores of unarmed civilians. Boys as young as 15 have been shot in the head and their bodies dumped outside their homes.

Doctors who worked in Kuwait’s hospitals following the invasion said Iraqi soldiers brought in scores of bodies of young men, many of whom were shot at close range in the heart and head. The doctors were forced to issue death certificates saying the victims had died after arrival at the hospitals.

Scores of hangings have also been reported in the grounds of Kuwait University of people suspected of opposing Iraq’s annexation of Kuwait. Those hanged were summarily executed after being accused of criminal offenses.

While Amnesty International has been unable to confirm some of these accounts of human rights abuses, they have come from a wide range of sources both within and outside Kuwait. “The reports tell a consistent story of violations which bears out Amnesty International’s own information on Iraq’s human rights record,” Amnesty International said.

Amnesty International condemns the summary executions, extrajudicial executions and torture being carried out by Iraqi forces.

It also opposes the use of the death penalty, which has been introduced for harboring western nationals, looting and hoarding food for commercial purposes. One Kuwaiti was executed in September for harboring an American, and Iraqi authorities have confirmed that 10 people have so far been executed for looting.