GENEVA — UN human rights chief Navi Pillay on Tuesday urged Iraq and the United States to investigate allegations of torture and unlawful killings in the Iraq conflict revealed in documents leaked last week.
"The US and Iraqi authorities should take necessary measures to investigate all allegations made in these reports and to bring to justice those responsible for unlawful killings, summary executions, torture and other serious human rights abuses," her office said in a statement.
Pillay said the confidential documents published last Friday by whistleblowing website WikiLeaks added to her concerns that serious breaches of international human rights law had occurred in Iraq.
Those possible breaches included "summary executions of a large number of civilians and torture and ill-treatment of detainees."
She said the "files reportedly indicate that the US knew, among other things, about widespread use of torture and ill-treatment of detainees by Iraqi forces, and yet proceeded with the transfer of thousands of persons who had been detained by US forces to Iraqi custody between early 2009 and July 2010."
"The files also allegedly include information on many undisclosed instances in which US forces killed civilians at checkpoints and during operations," the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights added.
The website released 400,000 classified military documents, which recount widespread torture in Iraqi prisons and purport to show 15,000 more civilian deaths than the previously disclosed figure of about 50,000.
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