Inside Iraq, occupation authorities suppressed information about female detainees so as not to provoke anger, on the one hand, and so as to give the Iraqi people the sense that the occupation respected local traditions, especially with regard to the sensitive status of women, on the other. On occasion, Iraqi collaborators helped promote this impression. On 18 April 2004, Ministry of Interior Chief Ahmed Youssef issued a statement denying maltreatment of female detainees. He said: "we are Muslims. We know very well how to treat our female detainees."

Apart from cases of such well-known detainees as Hoda Saleh Ammash and Rihab Taha, occupation authorities are generally mute about the existence of female detainees. Available information gives lie to their silence.

MALTREATMENT AND PROOF: On 20 April 2004, Abdul-Bassat Turki, the first Iraqi minister of human rights, gave an interview to The Guardian on the condition of female prisoners in Iraq. Turki had recently resigned from his post in protest against the human rights violations committed by American forces and Paul Bremer's determination to ignore his reports and to refuse him permission to visit Abu Ghraib.

Turki told the Guardian that he had warned Bremer repeatedly of the abuses of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, but that Bremer had consistently ignored all warnings. In December 2003, a month before the US military mounted its own secret investigation into Abu Ghraib, Turki phoned Bremer to complain of the treatment of female detainees. "They had been denied medical treatment. They had no proper toilet. They had only been given one blanket, even though it was winter," the former minister said.

Amnesty International interviewed several female victims of maltreatment and torture after their release from Abu Ghraib. Many complained of having been beaten, threatened with rape, verbally abused and held in solitary confinement for long periods of time. One Amnesty report states that since the invasion in 2003 women in Iraqi jails have been routinely threatened with rape.

One of the rare occasions in which Anne Clwyd, the British human rights envoy to Iraq, was moved to speak out about human rights violations after the invasion was when she learned of the arrest and subsequent torture of a 70-year-old woman, whose torturers forced her into a makeshift bridle and then mounted her like a donkey.

A report by the Iraqi Women's Will organisation listed the types of physical and psychological torture inflicted upon women in Iraqi jails. Amongst the most degrading is being brought in nude for questioning and hence subject to derisive and humiliating remarks by interrogators, wardens and translators. Prior to this, detainees are routinely threatened to be deprived of water, food, have been confined to small cages inhibiting all movement, exposed to extremes of heat and cold, and subject to forced sleep deprivation.

Hoda Al-Ezawi relates that she was kept in solitary confinement for 156 days. Then her sister was arrested and thrown into the cell with her, along with the corpse of their dead brother. Among the other types of torture inflicted upon her was to be kept standing for more than 12 hours straight while subject to continual threat and intimidation. US forces and the Iraqi National Guard arrested Al-Ezawi along with her two daughters, Nora, 15, and Sara, 20, on 17 February 2005 on the charge of supporting the resistance.

They threaten women, "confiscate" money, jewellery and other property, force women to watch as they deliberately humiliate their husbands, sons or fathers, and sometimes order them to take pictures with the cameras of American soldiers.

The Ministry of Interior's Wolf Brigade arrested Khalda Zaki, a 46-year-old housewife, in her native Mosul. Soon afterwards she appeared on Iraqi state television claiming she had supported an insurgent group. Later she retracted this confession, revealing how her captors had whipped her and threatened to rape her. The "Wolves", a group founded in October 2004, received two months' intensive training by American military personnel before being deployed in security operations against "armed groups". The brigade has become notorious for its use of torture and other forms of inhuman treatment.

Suheib Baz, a cameraman for Al-Jazeera, told The Independent that he had personally seen a 12-year-old girl being tortured: "She was naked, and crying out to me for help while being beaten." He also relates that prison wardens would photograph these horrors.

Still, the denial continues or the figures are airbrushed. As a result, we continue to encounter such reports as, "On 6 February 2006, a military spokesman told the French Press Agency that 50 detainees had been released, although he denied that any women were among them," and "four women have remained in detention after 400 detainees were released last month, among whom were five women."

British authorities recently announced that since October 2005, British authorities no longer held any women or children in custody. Even taking this statement at face value, it indicates that British authorities had detained women and children prior to that date, in conflict with previous denials.