Iraq's interior minister says reports of prisoners being tortured at an Iraqi-run centre have been exaggerated.Only a few of the 170 detainees at the Jadiriya centre in Baghdad appeared to have been maltreated, Bayan Jabr said.
But he made clear that no abuse would be tolerated. The prisoners, discovered by US forces on Sunday, had reportedly been tortured and were malnourished.
Mr Jabr spoke as the US warned the Baghdad government not to let sectarian militias take over detention centres.
"I reject torture and I will punish those who perform torture," he said.
By torturing them until they reject torture!
The BBC's Caroline Hawley in Baghdad says that the minister has been politically scarred over the revelations of abuse and went before the press reluctantly.
Mr Jabr acknowledged that several detainees had been mistreated - but despite an investigation now under way, he did not seem to know how many, our correspondent says.
At one point he spoke of five, at another point of seven.
5, 7, 160 like his deputy mentioned the other day, who's counting? You better not be counting Hamid... or else...
'Dangerous'
Mr Jabr also said some of the men found at the Jadiriya centre had been foreign terror suspects, and that he had personally requested they be kept there because they were dangerous.
"These are the most criminal terrorists who were in these cells," he said.
Displaying a unique interpretation of due process
Leaders from Iraq's once-dominant Sunni Arab minority have long complained about alleged human rights violations by the Shia-dominated provisional government.
They neglected to point out the irony of the ethnic group that used to run secret torture prisons being tortured in secret prisons run by the group they used to torture, installed by the country that had endorsed the intial group of torturers in the first place. Whew, international relations, it ain't for everyone.
Sunni groups have also demanded an international inquiry into allegations that Shia militias linked to the interior ministry were responsible for the abuse.
In his news conference, Mr Jabr denied that either militiamen or Iranian intelligence operatives had been working at the facility.
He also played down concerns over an impending sectarian crisis, saying that inmates at the centre included both Shias and Sunnis.
Shortly afterwards, the American embassy in Baghdad issued a statement saying US officials had "made it clear to the Iraqi government that there must not be militia or sectarian control or direction of facilities or ministries".
All your prison are belong to us! Seriously, militias? Freelance torture is so 80s, these days you pay professionals to do it, just like the Americans.
Mr Jabr's deputy, Maj Gen Hussein Kamal, had earlier said he wanted to place all of Iraq's internal security services under his ministry's control in order to prevent future cases of abuse.
"We want to gather all security departments under the wing of the Interior Ministry," he said.
Gen Kamal admitted that the Iraqi government had long feared such activities.
"What we were afraid of has happened when some prisoners were subjected to ill-treatment at the hands of the investigators," he said.
"We strongly condemn such illegal acts. All those responsible will be punished whatever their rank."
However, Gen Kamal also said the alleged abuse had been isolated incidents.
All 160, er 7, no 5... 5! of them.
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