THE UNITED NATIONS has called on the US and Iraq to investigate claims of human rights abuses contained within files published on the Wikileaks website.

The BBC quotes the UN’s rights chief, Navi Pillay, as saying the released files suggest the US had continued to entrust detainees to Iraqi authorities despite evidence that they had been tortured.

Wikileaks disclosed almost 400,000 secret war logs about the conduct of the US military in Iraq; some files suggest that serious human rights abuses occurred in the country, many against ordinary Iraqi civilians. Among the possible breaches of international law is the alleged “summary executions of a large number of civilians and torture and ill-treatment of detainees”.

In a statement, Pillay said:

The US and Iraqi authorities should take necessary measures to investigate all allegations made in these reports and to bring to justice those responsible for unlawful killings, summary executions, torture and other serious human rights abuses.

The UN’s adviser on torture, Manfred Novak, has also called for an inquiry into the alleged US abuses.

Novak urged President Obama to launch a widespread investigation into all allegations of torture against the US military – particularly in relation to the handing over of detainees to states where they would be mistreated, such as Egypt, Morocco and Syria.

He also pointed out that Obama, as a rule, refused to grant private interviews with detainees, and had also invoked state secrecy privileges to prevent civil lawsuits by alleged victims of US torture.

Channel 4′s Dispatches documentary team were granted advance access to the Wikileaks files.

See the documentary: Iraq’s Secret War Files.

The US military has denied allegations of ignoring torture in Iraq.