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Kurdish areas in the north-a law was passed to this effect in October 1974).
A reply from the Iraqi government assured AI that these allegations were untrue. It said: "We are not in the least surprised at the charges made against the Government of Iraq by inimical and spiteful circles. The fact that we have solemnly pledged ourselves to an unremitting fight against imperialism and reaction arouses the ire of many people and leads them to embark upon con- spiratorial activities against the country and to hurl charges at Iraq and at its leadership.'
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On 7 April Amnesty International again wrote to the President expressing concern at reports that, during the peirod of hostilities, "Kurdish and non- Kurdish civilians had not been accorded the protection guaranteed by inter- national humanitarian law". AI requested, now that the Iran-Iraq agreement had brought hostilities to an end, that all Kurdish detainees be released "and that they and all other Kurdish civilians be accorded the protection guaranteed by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights ratified by your country".
AI also urged that investigations be initiated into allegations of ill-treatment and torture and into the alarming number of executions. Al had received the names of 551 Kurdish civilians, including women and children, who had been detained, and 43 Kurds who had allegedly been tortured to death. Of the 43, most of them had previously been detained in Kirkuk or Mosul security prisons ór Abu Ghreb prison in Baghdad, and their bodies, when returned to their families, showed signs of torture.
One such case was a Kurdish religious leader, Mulla Ali Shamdani from Zakho, who, because he was thought to be a supporter of the Kurdish rebellion, was in June 1974 tortured to death, including having his eyes gouged out.
Some AI national sections were asked to appeal to their governments to intervene with the Iraqi authorities for the release of Kurdish detainees.
Letters have been sent to the Iraqi government from the International Secretariat and from adoption groups on behalf of two Jewish prisoners, Akram Baher and Shua Sofer, but no news has been received which would confirm that they are still alive.
Israel
During the past year, Amnesty International raised many individual cases of imprisonment in Israel in letters to the Attorney General. In November 1974, Secretary General Martin Ennals wrote to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin expres- sing Al's concern regarding two aspects of the administration of the West Bank territory by the Israeli authorities: deportation and administrative detention. In his letter the Secretary General urged upon the Israeli government “the termination by the administering authorities of the practice of deporting residents of the administered territories..."and appealed to them to permit "the return of those who have been so deported". Similarly, the Israeli government was requested to give urgent consideration to the possibility of suspending the practice of administrative detention.
Allegations of torture relating to administrative detainees were received. following the arrest of several hundred Arabs from the West Bank who were
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