The Los Angeles Times has revealed elite units, controlled by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s military office, continue to operate a secret jail in Baghdad’s Green Zone where prisoners routinely face torture to extract confessions. Iraq’s Justice Ministry ordered the prison shut down in March, but scores of prisoners have been held there since then. In interviews with the International Committee of the Red Cross, former prisoners reported beatings, electric shocks to the body, suffocation using plastic bags, scalding with boiling water or burning with cigarettes, being hung from ceilings with hands tied behind the back, the pulling out of fingernails, and being left naked for hours.