THE publication of a British dossier on abuses in Iraq appeared to backfire yesterday when human rights groups cited in the document accused the Government of cynically trying to justify war against Saddam Hussein.

The 23-page report, Saddam Hussein: crimes and human rights abuses, was billed by the Foreign Office as the most comprehensive investigation ever undertaken by a government into Iraqi atrocities.

The document set out how the Iraqi authorities used mass arrest, torture and killings to suppress the Iraqi people, in particular the Kurds of the north and the Shia Muslims in the south. While providing little new information, it named individuals responsible for torture and killings and cited the testimony of victims. An accompanying video film showed suspects being beaten and prisoners executed by firing squad.

The Government claimed that at the Sijn al-Tarbut or “Casket Prison”, under the secret police headquarters, more than 100 prisoners are kept in steel boxes, which are opened once a day for half an hour, until they confess or die. Torturers are accused of using a variety of methods on political prisoners, including eye-gouging, acid baths and piercing hands with an electric drill.

“The dossier makes for harrowing reading, with accounts of torture, rape and other horrific human rights abuses,” Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said at a speech to the Atlantic Alliance. “The aim is to remind the world that the abuses of the Iraqi regime extend far beyond its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction in violation of its international obligations.”

Amnesty International, which was cited repeatedly as a source for the report, charged the Government with using the allegations as propaganda to justify a future war to overthrow Saddam. “This . . . is nothing but a cold and calculated manipulation of the work of human rights activists,” Irene Khan, Amnesty’s secretary-general, said. “Let us not forget that these same governments turned a blind eye to reports of widespread violations in Iraq before the Gulf War.”

She was referring, in particular, to the use of chemical weapons on Kurdish civilians in the late-1980s, notably at Halabja, where 5,000 were killed by poison gas. At the time Britain played down the incident and continued high-level contacts with Iraq.

Tam Dalyell, Labour MP for Linlithgow and a critic of the Government’s policy on Iraq, described the document as “cranking up for war”.

British policy also came under attack from Hussain al-Shahristani, a former Iraqi political prisoner, who was presented by the Foreign Office to recount his ordeal. He said that abuses “should have been noticed and acted upon a long time ago”, while conceding “later is better than never”.

The Foreign Office description of living conditions in Iraq also threatened to trigger a row with the Home Office. Only 150 Iraqis were granted refugee status in Britain in the third quarter of this year out of 3,065 cases. Future asylum-seekers may quote the report to back their claims.

Ann Clwyd, a Labour MP who chairs Indict, a group also quoted in the report, said that the Government should follow up the publication by committing itself to apprehending and putting on trial Iraqis suspected of war crimes.

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