Abuse in Iraq worse than Saddam days

In an interview with the Observer newspaper in London, Ayad Allawi pointed an accusing finger at the interior ministry, and alleged that "a lot of Iraqis" are being tortured or killed during interrogation.

"People are doing the same as (in) Saddam Hussein's time and worse," said Allawi, an prominent opponent of Saddam who steered the US-backed interim government in Baghdad until April this year.

"It is an appropriate comparison. People are remembering the days of Saddam. These were the precise reasons that we fought Saddam Hussein and now we are seeing the same things."

Allawi's remarks came two weeks after US troops raided a secret prison in Iraq and found about 170 detainees in need of water, food and medical attention.

Graphic pictures released by the Committee of Muslim Scholars, the main Sunni religious organisation in Iraq, showed prisoners with severe burns, massive bruising and welts on their bodies.

US military commanders and diplomats called the abuse "intolerable", pressuring elected prime minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari into ordering a joint Iraqi-US inquiry.

Interior Minister Bayan Baqer Solagh has denied claims that he commands death squads targeting the Sunni minority, adding that "only a few detainees were punched and hit" in the prison and that US forces knew of its existence.

Allawi told The Observer that the interior ministry, though not Solagh, was "at the heart of the matter".