A SECRET police force operating with British approval in southern Iraq has been accused of kidnapping suspects who have been cruelly mistreated in detention and, in some cases, have disappeared.

Several families have claimed that men targeted by the Istakhbarat el-Shurt (intelligence police) were abducted at gunpoint and that appeals to British authorities to establish their fate have gone unheeded. They say there is no way of finding out whether relatives have been imprisoned or killed.

Last week a Sunday Times reporter who gained access to the force’s headquarters saw prisoners blindfolded, handcuffed and forced to face the walls of the rooms where they were held.

A senior commander of the force admitted that it had hired members of the Iranian-backed Badr brigade, which has been accused of running death squads blamed for the murders of dozens of supporters of Saddam Hussein’s ousted regime.

The Badr brigade is the militia of the Supreme Council for Islamic Resistance in Iraq, which received cash and training from Tehran to fight Saddam’s forces in the country’s southern marshes.

It is now barred from carrying weapons on the streets of Basra, southern Iraq’s principal city. However the intelligence police commander confirmed that armed Badr members had helped his force with “dangerous” operations.

The fundamentalist influence on the intelligence police is illustrated by a picture of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, the revolutionary leader of Iran, on the wall of its headquarters.

The force operates under the control of Wael Abdel Latif, the governor of Basra province, who is himself supervised by the British. The force boasts of “good relations” with the British, who have issued its firearms licences. Concerns about the force’s operations arose after complaints that masked men had seized former Ba’ath party members.

At its headquarters last week, some officers wore police uniforms or military fatigues, while others were dressed in suits or jeans. Toyota pick-up trucks with no registration plates were parked outside. On the ground floor, one officer was walking around brandishing a large hunting knife.

Most of the prisoners were in a large room. All had their hands tied behind their backs and hoods or bandages secured across their faces. They sat cross-legged on the concrete floor — some murmuring to themselves, others stiff with fear. A guard said they had been there for four or five days.

Down the corridor, behind a door marked “medical room”, at least four more blindfolded prisoners were huddled together on the floor. About 12 hours later the same prisoners could be seen on the floor, still wearing their blindfolds.

Abbas Abdel Ali, a deputy director of the force, confirmed the secretive nature of its work. “When talking to normal ordinary people, we say we are police but in fact we work for the government. Only one-third of our work is police work. The rest is civilian intelligence and intelligence for state officials,” he said. “We have our eyes and ears everywhere around the city. You may see someone selling cigarettes but he is in fact a policeman working for us.”

The prisoners deserved to be locked up, he added: “These people are criminals. We make sure we do not arrest anyone unless there is clear evidence against them.”

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