BAGHDAD, Jan 24 (AFP) - Iraq's security apparatus is guilty of human rights abuses, a senior US official and an Iraqi justice told AFP, once more fanning concern about police conduct in the battle against the country's insurgency.
"Their record is not spotless on human rights," the US official told AFP on condition of anonymity, adding that the US embassy had registered its concerns with the Iraqi government.
"As a general rule in the security services, there is a culture that the ends justify the means."
But the official said the United States, which led the March 2003 war that toppled Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, was working to reform the country's security apparatus.
"We're not going to let this become like the Saddam regime."
The official said the complaints would be aired in the US State Department's annual human rights report to be released next month.
The alarm over behaviour, particularly in the interior ministry, comes as the New York based Human Rights Watch is due to issue its own study on rights violations by Iraq's security services on Tuesday.
Concerns about the conduct of Iraq's security apparatus were first raised in October when the chief investigative judge on Iraq's central criminal court, Zuhair al-Malily, was demoted to a lower court for his investigation into illegal detentions and torture.
At the time, Interior Minister Falah Naquib acknowledged before the country's interim parliament that there had been cases of arbitrary detention but said his government was trying to stamp them out.
However, an Iraqi justice, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP last week the abuses by the interior ministry have carried on, with all voices of dissent chilled since Maliky's demotion.
"Nobody wants to handle the cases. No one wants to risk losing his position," the justice said.
The justice added he is aware of six to seven cases in the last three months where the interior ministry has refused court orders to release detainees whom the courts ruled should not be held.
"This is a violation of the law. The only person who can order a detention or release someone is a judge."
Warrantless arrests have also increased due to the use of the Iraqi national guard to conduct raids around the country, the justice said.
"They are using the excuse we have an emergency situation and there are emergency laws. But even any detention under the emergency law should be brought to court within 24 hours. They are not doing that," the justice said.
For its part, the interior ministry defended its conduct. Major General Hussein Ali Kamal, who heads the Iraqi police's intelligence department, denied any knowledge of abuses and vowed if any police were involved in such misdeeds they would be punished.
Kamal, whose agency is named in the Human Rights Watch report to be released Tuesday, defended the practice of arrests made without a warrant, blaming it on the security situation.
"Because we are in an emergency situation, there are some detentions made" without a warrant at bombing sites, he said, adding they were all eventually brought before a court.
The primary focus of the central criminal court's probes under Maliky were the interior ministry's elite major crimes unit.
The defunct US occupation authority had initially assigned Maliky the folder of studying bribery and brutality by members of the major crimes unit in April 2004, two months before Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's caretaker government took power.
Five of the cases involved the use of electric shock on detainees, leaving one man partially paralysed, Maliky told AFP in October. His probe resulted in the arrest or conviction of 20 policemen.
But once Iraq regained its sovereignty in June, his investigation ground to a halt as the government put a premium on restoring security. Ten policemen with outstanding charges refused to obey court summons and suffered no consequence.
Maliky again locked horns with the security services in September after the major crimes unit and agents from Iraq's new national intelligence service arrested 52 people at the Baghdad headquarters of Hezbollah, a faction of a mainstream Shiite religious party.
The judge ordered their release, saying the interior ministry had failed to obtain a proper warrant or bring the suspects before a court.
In the fall out from the case, the national intelligence service simply secured broader powers, being awarded its own special judges authorised to issue arrest warrants.
At the time Maliky was sacked, he said a further 50 suspects were being held without charge.

01/24/2005 17:53 GMT - AFP