Deputy Justice Minister Busho Ibrahim said that watchdog groups, including the International Comittee of the Red Cross (ICRC), had visited the jail in question, in a defence ministry complex in Baghdad's Green Zone, but the ICRC said it had never inspected the facility.

Ibrahim's remarks came in response to a Los Angeles Times report that said some detainees at the Baghdad prison, formally known as Camp Honour, had been held for up to two years.

"It is under the control of the ministry of justice. It is my responsibility, and I deny all these accusations -- they are all lies," Ibrahim, the minister responsible for Iraq's prisons, told AFP by telephone.

"The prison is visited by the ministry of human rights and the International Red Cross. They know about it. There are 270 detainees and most of them were arrested over counter-terrorism offences and by Baghdad Operations Command."

He added: "Families can visit their sons or husbands, lawyers can visit them regularly. It's like any other prison run by the ministry of justice.

"It is not true that it follows Maliki's orders -- it is run by the ministry of justice."

But the ICRC said it had not visited the jail because its pre-conditions, which include the right to interview detainees and carry out repeat visits, had not been met.

"ICRC was not able to carry out a visit to the place of detention in question," Layal Horanieh, spokeswoman for the ICRC in Iraq, told AFP.

She said that ICRC visits to detention facilities in Iraq require that the ICRC is able to carry out repeat visits, have unhindered access to all detainees and all areas of the facility, and that all interviews with detainees be carried out unsupervised.

Horanieh added: "Discussions with authorities on a high level are therefore ongoing in as far as ICRC's overall access to this place of detention and others, Iraq-wide."

She also noted that an ICRC visit in and of itself did not equate to a "certificate of compliance with human rights and humanitarian law standards."

Iraq has a fractured penal system in which the interior, defence and justice ministries all run their own detention centres. Convicts are held in justice ministry jails while detainees yet to face trial are held in any of the three.

The Los Angeles Times, citing unnamed Iraqi officials and diplomatic sources, said restricted access to the jail had prevented efforts by officials to investigate allegations of prisoner beatings and other abuses.

"It is inaccessible, and no one can go there," the paper quoted a senior diplomatic source as saying. "Lawyers cannot get there. Families cannot go there."

The paper also quoted a letter from Iraq's human rights ministry dated October 2010 calling for the jail to be closed, saying that such a move was necessary to reform the facility.

Iraq's prisons have in the past been a source for concern for human rights advocates.

In April 2010, New York-based Human Rights Watch said Iraqi men were raped, electrocuted and beaten at a "secret prison" in Baghdad, after interviewing 42 men transferred from a jail where they said the brutality was meted out.

It described the prisoners' accounts of abuse as "credible and consistent," and called for an independent and impartial investigation as well as for prosecutions at the highest level.

According to HRW, prison guards suspended blindfolded detainees upside down during interrogation, then kicked, whipped and beat them before placing a dirty plastic bag over suspects' heads to cut off their air supply.

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