Saddam Hussein and The Horror Dossier.

The British Foreign Office on Dec. 2 released a 23-page dossier of evidence arguing that systematic rape, torture, gassing, public beheadings and mass executions of Iraqis by Saddam were the deliberate policy of his "regime of unique horror". Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the document, based on intelligence material, first-hand accounts of victims and reports by non-governmental organisations, set out a powerful human rights case in addition to the international security argument for disarming Saddam. He added: "We not only help those countries in the region which are subject to Iraqi threats and intimidations. We also deprive Saddam of his most powerful tools for keeping the Iraqi people living in fear and subjugation".

Some rights groups and anti-war politicians later expressed fears that the British government had motives beyond protesting human rights abuses. "I think that this highly unusual, indeed unprecedented, publication is cranking up for war", said Tam Dalyell of the Labour Party, who is the longest-serving member of parliament and a persistent critic of current policy towards Iraq.

The document listed what it said were Saddam's favoured methods of torture. They included eye-gouging, piercing of hands with an electric drill, stubbing cigarettes out on victims' skin, mock execution, suspension from a ceiling, electric shocks to the genitals, rape, the extraction of finger and toenails, beating on the soles of the feet and acid baths.

The report said since mid-2000 the punishment for slandering or making abusive comments about Saddam or his family has been amputation of the tongue. The dossier said: "Iraqi television has broadcast pictures of these punishments as a warning for others".

A copy of a government personnel card shown in the report and credited to Harvard University's Iraq Research and Documentation Project described one state employee, Aziz Salih Ahmed, as a "fighter in the popular army". His assigned "activity" was given as "violation of women's honour".

The release of the report marked the third time since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that Britain has come forth with compilations of published reports and intelligence findings to bolster tough joint US-British positions against terror and Iraq. Straw made the dossier public at a breakfast meeting of the Atlantic Partnership, a group aimed at improving relations between Europe and North America.

The document, and a graphic video played at a subsequent Foreign Office briefing and made available to TV stations, were seen as efforts to win public support for possible military moves on Iraq. A senior British government official said: "This dossier itself is not attempting to provide a justification for military action". Straw told the breakfast gathering the aim was "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".

Hussein Shahristani, former head of Iraq's nuclear energy agency, appeared at the Foreign Office briefing to relate his personal experiences of being imprisoned and tortured by Saddam's regime. He said of the Dec. 2 focus on rights violations: "However, later is better than never".

Shahristani escaped from Iraq in 1991 after 12 years in jail, 11 of them in solitary confinement, for his refusal to involve himself in the nuclear programme after it was diverted in 1979 to weapons development. He said he doubted that the current inspections would succeed in turning up WMD, adding: "Saddam is the master at hiding, concealing and moving around weapons".

Shahristani questioned whether scientists working in Iraq's weapons programme could take up the UN offer to leave Iraq with their families in order to testify to what they knew. He said: "They were all forced against their will to take part, but they will fear co-operating because they know Saddam will attack their relatives, their homes, their tribes and their towns". He said the only solution to Iraq's human rights abuses was "change of regime"; but he coupled that statement with worry over the dangers of chemical or biological weapons being loosed on citizens in combat.

He added: "I have not seen any serious plan or heard any serious discussion as to how the Iraqi people could be protected in the event of military intervention from the consequences of such weapons, and I would like to raise this concern that the Iraqis may again have to pay the price of this war as they have paid the price of sanctions and the price of all the previous wars".