Abuse of prisoners in Iraq widespread, officials say

Leila Fadel, Knight Ridder… Abuse of prisoners in Iraq widespread, officials say

Leila Fadel, Knight Ridder Newspapers

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Iraqi authorities have been torturing and abusing prisoners in jails across the country, current and former Iraqi officials charged.

Deputy Human Rights Minister Aida Ussayran and Gen. Muntadhar Muhi al-Samaraee, a former head of special forces at the Ministry of the Interior, made the allegations two weeks after 169 men who apparently had been tortured were discovered in a south-central Baghdad building run by the Interior Ministry.

The men reportedly had been beaten with leather belts and steel rods, crammed into tiny rooms with tens of others and forced to sit in their own excrement.

A senior American military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, said he suspected that the abuse wasn’t isolated to the jail the U.S. military discovered.

Ussayran said abuse was taking place across the country.

In five visits to a women’s prison in Baghdad’s Kadhimiya district during more than three months, the Human Rights Ministry found that women were being raped by male guards, Ussayran said. That problem continues.

One woman told the Human Rights Ministry that she was raped seven times on the seventh floor of the Interior Ministry, which is notorious to some Iraqi Sunni Muslims and home to intelligence offices. The Human Rights Ministry investigated that, and Ussayran said the problem had been rectified.

No one was able to estimate the extent of the abuse, but the Iraqi government expects the results of the investigation into the Baghdad secret prison and into other prisons by the end of the week, Laith Kubba, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, said Saturday.

Internet plagiarism rampant in colleges

Michael Shaw, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Don McCabe has surveyed 45,000 of America’s college students in the past three years, asking them to come clean about whether they cheat on their tests and term papers.

Many cheaters in the classroom are surprisingly honest in the surveys, said McCabe, the founder of the Center for Academic Integrity and a foremost authority on academic fraud. About 37 percent have admitted to what’s called “cut-and-paste” plagiarism, the practice of creating term papers by copying information available over the Internet.

“It’s becoming a pervasive problem,” said McCabe, a professor of management and global business at Rutgers Business School in New Jersey. “It happens a lot in last-minute situations. The paper isn’t done, and it’s the night before it’s due. If they don’t get caught, it’s tempting to do it again.”

University authorities consider this practice to be a violation of conduct codes, and the penalty can range from a failing grade on an assignment to expulsion.

Defendants dominate at Saddam’s trial; case adjourned for a week

Nancy A. Youssef, Knight Ridder Newspapers

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Monday was supposed to be the day the chief prosecutor finally began presenting evidence against Saddam Hussein as the trial of the former dictator resumed after a six-week adjournment.

Instead, Saddam’s defense dominated, so much so that the prosecutor, Jaafar al-Mousawi, complained that he wasn’t getting time to make his case.

The events had legal experts, politicians and interested Iraqis alike wondering whether the court was capable of trying Saddam and his former advisers.

He and his co-defendants demanded everything from pen and paper to new legal representation. Saddam barked orders at the judge, Rizgar Mohammed Amin.

Saddam’s half-brother Barazan Ibrahim revealed that he’d been diagnosed with cancer recently and accused the government of “indirect murder” by denying him proper medical care in jail.

At the end of the two-hour session, the judge adjourned the case for another week so that two of the eight defendants could get new lawyers.

Stan Berenstain, co-creator of Berenstain Bears, dies at 82

Gayle Ronan Sims, Knight Ridder Newspapers

PHILADELPHIA – Bear Country in Bucks County, Pa., is a bit quieter now without the sound of artist Stanley Berenstain scratching his pen over the soft pencil drawings of Mama, Papa, Sister, Brother and Baby Bear.

Berenstain, 82, of Solebury Township, co-creator with his wife, Jan, of the wildly successful Berenstain Bears books, died of cancer Saturday at Doylestown Hospital.

The Berenstains wrote more than 200 books, some selling millions of copies, and inspired an industry of Berenstain Bears toys, clothes, movies and even a television show on PBS. The only contemporary children’s books more popular than theirs are those by Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss.