2A - The Michigan Daily - Thursday, November 17, 2005 NATION/WORLD AP PHOTO Iraqi policemen show their bruises, allegedly caused by torture, as they are treated at Yarmouk Hospital in Bagh- dad yesterday. The policemen said they suffered beatings by men who identified themselves as Interior Ministry commandos. Malnourished prisoners Ifound to be ofalset BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - A top Inte- rior Ministry official said yesterday the 173 malnourished prisoners found by U.S. forces included all Iraqi sects, playing down allegations of a campaign by Shi- ite-led security forces to suppress Sunni Arabs ahead of next month's election. The Shiite-led government sought to dampen Sunni outrage over revelations Tuesday by Prime Minister Ibrahim al- Jaafari that the detainees, some showing signs of torture, were found last weekend by U.S. troops at an Interior Ministry lockup in the capital. Most were believed to be Sunni Arabs, the leading group in the insurgency. But the deputy interior minister, Maj. Gen. Hussein Kamal, said the detain- ees also included Shiites, Kurds and Turkomen. He gave no breakdown. President Jalal Talabani said there was "no place for torture and persecution in the new Iraq" and that anyone involved "would be severely punished." And government spokesman Laith Kubba defended the Interior Ministry, saying all the detainees were legally arrested and most were referred to courts for prosecution. They were kept at the detention center in the Jadriyah district because of a lack of jail space, he said. "The Interior Ministry is doing its job at a difficult time and some mistakes happen," he said. That did little to assuage Sunni Arab anger, with Sunni politicians saying the Jadriyah center was not the only place where detainees are tortured. Sunni lead- er Adnan al-Dulaimi said he had com- plained to the government about abuses at three Interior Ministry compounds. He and several other Sunni politi- cians demanded an international inquiry. Some alleged that Shiite-led security forces were trying to intimidate Sunnis from voting in the Dec. 15 parliament elections. Many Sunnis saw the hand of Shiite-dominated Iran, which offered sanctuary to many Iraqi Shiites during Saddam Hussein's Sunni-led regime. "Some government officials want to keep the Sunnis away from the next elections by terrorizing us," Saad Farhan, a Sunni merchant in Ramadi, said, adding his brother and cousin had been held in Jadriyah. "We believe that Iran's agents are behind it because normal and genuine Iraqis never do this." Raad al-Dulaimi, a farmer near Rama- di, said security services were dominated by "pro-Iranian elements" bent on "settling old sectarian scores with the Sunnis." At a Baghdad news conference, Tariq al-Hashimi, secretary-general of the Iraqi Islamic Party, held up photos of the bod- ies of people who appeared to have been tortured and said: "This is what your Sunni brothers are being subjected to." The photos were later determined to have been from an incident last summer in which Sunnis died after being locked in an Interior Ministry van in 100- degree-plus heat. The ministry said the ventilation system failed. The Sunni call for an international investigation drew support from Man- fred Nowak, a special U.N. investigator on torture. "That torture is still practiced in Iraq after Saddam Hussein, that is no secret," Nowak told The Associ- ated Press. "It is shocking, but on the other hand, we have received allegations of these secret (deten- tion) places in Iraq already for quite a long time." Torture allegations illustrate the brutal nature of the Iraq conflict, where insurgents blow up cars among civilians, kidnap and decapitate "col- laborators" and settle scores in drive- by shootings on crowded streets. With Sunnis dominating the insur- gency, Shiites and Kurds in the security forces often round up large numbers of Sunnis in hopes of get- ting a few insurgents. Reprisal kid- nappings and killings are common. Patriot Act deal struck WASHINGTON (AP) - House and Senate negotiators have struck a tenta- tive deal on the expiring Patriot Act that would curb the FBI's investigative power and require the Justice Department to more fully report its secret requests for information about ordinary people. Democrats and civil libertarians said that while the tentative deal makes some improvements, it doesn't address their chief concern: the curbing of FBI power to gather certain information by requir- ing the investigators to prove the subject's records are connected to a foreign agent or government. "It gives a nod toward checks and balances without fixing the most fun- damental flaws in the Patriot Act," said Lisa Graves of the Americans Civil Liberties Union. The agreement, which would make most provisions of the existing law per- manent, was reached just before dawn Wednesday. But by midmorning GOP leaders had already made plans for a House vote today and a Senate vote by the end of the week. That would put the centerpiece of President Bush's war on terror on his desk before Thanksgiving, a month before more than a dozen provi- sions were set to expire. Officials negotiating the deal described it on condition of anonymity because the draft is not official and has not been signed by any of the 34 conferees. Any deal would mark Congress's first revision of the law passed a few weeks after the Sept. I terror attacks. In doing so, lawmakers said they tried to find the nation's comfort level with expanded law enforcement power in the post-9/l era - a task that carries extra political risks for all 435 members of the House and a third of the Senate facing midterm elections next year. For Bush, too, such a renewal would come at a sensitive time. With his approval ratings slipping in his second term, the president could bolster a tough- on-terrorism image. The tentative deal would make perma- nent all but a handful of the expiring pro- visions, the sources said. Others would expire in seven years if not renewed by Congress. They include rules on wiretap- ping, obtaining business records under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and new standards for monitoring "lone wolf" terrorists who may be operating independent of a foreign agent or power. By noon, House Democrats on the panel were issuing complaints about the seven-year expiration, arguing that since the House had endorsed the four-year expiration dates enacted as part of the Senate bill, the three pro- visions should "sunset" at four years, not seven. We Deliver! Chinese Hot and Cold Dishes Malaysian Specialties Vegetarian and Vegan Dishes Shanghai Dim Sum Weekly Featured Dish: Pineapple Chicken Fried Rice Chia Shiang * 0 2016 Packard Road Ann Arbor M1, 48104 (Across from Frasier's Pub) Open 11 AM- 10 PM Daily Sunday 12 PM- 10 PM (734) 741-0778 not fashion just got easier Join Club P ohh pyvisiting ~~ posh h.com WASHINGTON Post reporter knew Plame's identity The Washington Post reported that at least one senior Bush administration official told editor Bob Woodward about CIA operative Valerie Plame about a month before her identity was publicly exposed. The newspaper reported that Woodward told Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, who is investigating the leak of Plame's identity, that the official talked to him about Plame in mid-June 2003. Woodward and editors at the Post refused to identify the official to reporters other than to say it was not Libby. Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Karl Rove's legal team, said Rove was not the official who talked to Woodward. Rove is a top deputy to President Bush and was referred to, but not by name, in Libby's indictment, as having discussed Plame's iden- tity with reporters. Just hours before, Vice President Cheney's former top aide, indicted last month on perjury and obstruction charges, reviewed documents yesterday at a federal courthouse. Accompanied by his legal team, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby walked into the court- house without the crutches that he'd been using during a court appearance two weeks ago when he pleaded not guilty to charges in the CIA leak investigation. WASH INGTON Senate approves pension overhaul plan Hoping to reverse the deterioration of pension plans covering 44 million Ameri- cans, the Senate voted Wednesday to force companies to make up underfunding estimated at $450 billion and live up to promises made to employees. The action came a day after the federal agency that insures such plans reported massive liabilities and predicted a troubled future. The Senate legislation, passed 97-2, takes on the daunting task of compel- ling companies with defined-benefit plans to live up to their funding obli- gations - without driving those companies into abandoning the plans and further eroding the retirement benefits of millions of people. "This bill honors a promise that we made way back in 1974" when Con- gress passed legislation to protect pensions, said Finance Committee Chair- man Charles Grassley (R-Iowa). "If you've been promised a pension, we are going to make sure that you receive it." BUSAN, South Korea Bush looks for support from Asian leaders Counseling resolve and patience, President Bush is looking for a show of unity among Asian leaders to press North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program., Among those gathering here for a 21-nation summit are the leaders of the five coun- tries - the United States, China, South Korea, Russia and Japan - negotiating with North Korea for its nuclear disarmament. Bush is meeting today with South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun after talks yesterday in Japan with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi that included a call for dismantling North Korea's nuclear program. South Korea has resisted the tough approach advocated by the Bush administra- tion for ending the impasse with North Korea, opposing the idea of military action if diplomacy fails. 9 0 . ' NEWS I1N BRIEF t f HEDINES MAONIH OL .:: . 1* BEIJING m 's mainland sees first human bird flu case China reported its first human cases of bird flu on the mainland yesterday, including at least one fatality, as health workers armed with vaccine and dis- .infectant raced to inoculate billions of chickens and other poultry in a mas- sive campaign to contain the virus. I -. .*via - Compiled from Daily wire reports CORRECTIONS A photo caption in yesterday's edition of the Daily incorrectly named the organizer of an event on Ethiopia as Nebyat Demessie. The event organizer was Menna Demessie A photo caption in Tuesday's edition of the Daily incorrectlystated,,that Michigan League chef Steve Young teaches a class on making Thanksgiving din-t ner. The caption should have said Unions-Food Service chef Dave Young teaches a class on making Thanksgiving dinner. 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