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Iraq Begins Inquiry Into Alleged Torture
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 16 - As Iraqi investigators began searching through a secret underground prison run by police in the heart of the capital, Sunni Arab leaders today furiously denounced the Shiite-led government for supporting the torture of Sunni detainees there and called for an international inquiry.

The discovery of the prison by the American military in a raid on Sunday has galvanized Sunni Arab anger and widened the country's sectarian divide just a month before elections for a full, four-year government.

The American general charged with securing Baghdad said today that Sunni Arab leaders were supportive of the operation, which ended this afternoon. The commander, Maj. Gen. William G. Webster Jr. of the Third Infantry Division, said American officers would help scrutinize the evidence seized from the prison, and that his troops were prepared to investigate other credible complaints of secret detentions by Iraqi security forces.

The American raid forced Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Shiite prime minister of Iraq, to announce Tuesday that the government would investigate accusations of torture at the detention center. Many of the 173 prisoners there were found in weakened, malnourished states.

A former prisoner said in a telephone interview today that he and other inmates, mostly Sunni Arabs, were regularly beaten and electrocuted, and he was left blindfolded for the duration of his stay, more than three months. The Interior Ministry acknowledged in a terse statement Tuesday that torture had occurred and that "instruments of torture" had been found.

The prison was in the basement of a bomb shelter built by Saddam Hussein's government and converted into a major operations center for the Interior Ministry after the American invasion....