Torture chambersIraq maintained a secret “torture chamber” in diplomatic mission in New York City
The Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein kept what it called a “detention room” – a euphemism for a torture chamber — in the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Iraq, a five-floor apartment building on 79th Street. One of the rooms in the mission was converted to a torture chamber after Saddam seized power in Iraq in 1979. Saddam’s security police used the space to imprison Iraqis living in the United States – at times for up to fifteen days — and use the prisoners as leverage against their family members back in Iraq. Quite a few uncooperative prisoners were killed, and their bodies shipped back to Iraq in diplomatic boxes.
The Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein kept what it called a “detention room” – a euphemism for a torture chamber — in the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Iraq, a five-floor apartment building on 79th Street.
One of the rooms in the mission was converted to a torture chamber after Saddam seized power in Iraq in 1979.
The New York Post quotes two Iraqi officials, who spoke to the paper on condition of anonymity, that agents from the Iraqi mukhabarat, the country’s security service, used the space to imprison Iraqis living in the United States – at times for up to fifteen days — and use the prisoners as leverage against their family members back in Iraq.
“It was a dark room. The doors were reinforced in a way that nobody could break in or out. You didn’t need to soundproof it,” one official told the Post.
“You’re not going to hear someone screaming down there,” the other added.
The two officials told the paper that they knew of many acts of torture committed by mukhabarat agents on those imprisoned in the secret chamber, including removal of fingernails, intense beatings, and the use of copper wires and rubber hoses.
“Mukhabarat does whatever the hell Mukhabarat needs to do,” an official said. “They are the last people you ever wanted to meet during the Saddam era.”
The two officials said that in many cases, Hussein’s agents in New York would kill uncooperative prisoners and ship their bodies back to Iraq.
“They just put [the body] in a diplomatic box and it can just be shipped,” they explained. “This is diplomatic – nobody has the authority to examine it or open it.”
The two officials told the Post that all evidence had been wiped clean by the U.S. government following the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Hussein..
“U.S. government officials came in. They took hard drives, computers. They went into vaults – they smash them open,” one official claimed. “Officially, they were running Iraq because we didn’t have a government.”
The mission was returned to Iraq a year later, they added, but mukhabarat was no longer associated with the hidden space. In 2014 the space was converted to a kitchenette as part of a broader renovation of the mission.
