Activists angry at UN praise for coalition

Human rights groups are angry at a United Nations report that praised the US and its allies for ending years of brutality by Saddam Hussein’s regime, but did not “call coalition forces to account”.

A report by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said that the coalition’s invasion of Iraq last year ”removed a government that preyed on the Iraqi people and committed shocking, systematic and criminal violations of human rights”. But it warned that some cases of prisoner abuse might be considered war crimes.