Despite numerous Iraqi court orders and a 2008 Amnesty Law requiring the release of uncharged detainees after six or 12 months depending on the case, an estimated 30,000 people remain under unlawful detention, according to the London- based rights group.

WASHINGTON (IPS) — The U.S. transfer of Iraqi detainees to national authorities with a long record of human rights abuses could prove illegal under international law, Amnesty International cautioned in a new report Tuesday.

In preparation for their 2011 withdrawal from Iraq, U.S. forces have been releasing detainees into the notorious Iraqi prison system. All but about 200 have now been transferred, without any guarantees against torture or ill- treatment, the report says.

“Iraq’s security forces have been responsible for systematically violating detainees’ rights and they have been permitted to do so with impunity,” said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International’s director for the Middle East and North Africa, in a statement.

“Yet, the U.S. authorities, whose own record on detainees’ rights has been so poor, have now handed over thousands of people detained by U.S. forces to face this catalogue of illegality, violence and abuse, abdicating any responsibility for their human rights,” he added.

Despite numerous Iraqi court orders and a 2008 Amnesty Law requiring the release of uncharged detainees after six or 12 months depending on the case, an estimated 30,000 people remain under unlawful detention, according to the London- based rights group.

Recently transferred detainees face new dangers in Iraqi custody. In April, Human Rights Watch revealed the existence of a secret Baghdad detention facility that practiced “systematic and routine torture.”

Of the 300 men transferred to the Al Rusafa Detention Center from the secret facility in the Old Muthanna airport, Human Rights Watch interviewed 42 prisoners who were consistent in describing grim conditions. According to personal accounts and corresponding physical evidence like scars, prisoners were hung upside-down, deprived of air, kicked, whipped, beaten, given electric shocks, and sodomized.

Despite numerous wartime abuses carried out by U.S. forces in Iraq, including the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, some Iraqis say they would prefer U.S. detention to national prison.

“Iraqis have become convinced that the occupying Americans are more merciful than the people of this country,” Abu Huthaifa, an Iraqi who was in jail, told the Christian Science Monitor in May.

“[When] people leave the prisons, they leave with hatred toward the government and those leaders who manage to slander the word ‘democracy,'” he said.

As U.S. forces make haste to transfer all security responsibilities to the Iraqi government, the Amnesty report criticizes both the U.S. and Iraq for overlooking these detention abuses.

“U.S. forces, by transferring individuals to Iraqi detention facilities where they are clearly at risk of torture and other ill-treatment, may be complicit in these abuses and have breached their international obligations towards the prisoners,” according to the report.

The majority of detainees are Sunni Arabs held under suspicion of working with armed Sunni groups against U.S. forces and Iraqi authorities. But the report also documents hundreds of Shi’a Muslims suspected of supporting the al- Mahdi Army, a group that has been in armed opposition of the occupation until recently.

Camp Cropper, near the Baghdad International Airport, is cited in the Amnesty report as the last prison to switch from U.S. to Iraqi control in July 2010.

Reporters from the Christian Science Monitor visited the center in 2009 when transfers were already taking place.

Col. John Huey, the commander responsible for the internment facilities at the camp, recognized that prisoners should be transferred only to centers run by the Ministry of Justice because those run by the Interior and Defense Ministries were far worse. However, reporters from the Monitor observed U.S. soldiers in Diyala transferring prisoners to Interior Ministry prisons, which was apparently normal procedure.

The Amnesty report recommends that Iraq ratify the Rome Statute creating the International Criminal Court, as well as the second Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions, and the Optional Protocol of the U.N. Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

“The Iraqi authorities must take the firm and decisive action now, at the completion of the handover of prisons to Iraqi custody, to show that they have the political will to uphold the human rights of all Iraqis, in accordance with their international obligations, and to stop the torture and other gross abuses of detainees’ rights that are so prevalent today,” said Smart.

“Detainees who have been held for long periods without recognizable criminal charges against them, and without having been tried, must be released or brought to trial promptly in full compliance with international standards of fair trial and without recourse to the death penalty,” he said.