Baghdad, Jan. 2: From the marble mansions of Baghdad, Saddam Hussein’s in-laws are leading the world’s least likely human rights organisation, as families of the coalition’s 55 most wanted men band together to appeal for fair treatment for them.

Many of the coalition’s top targets were either captured or negotiated their surrender in April and May, immediately after the war. Since then they have not been allowed to see their families or their lawyers and no charges have been brought.

For families whose very word once meant life and death for ordinary Iraqis, this new impotence has come as an outrage.

“We do not even know where our relatives are being held,” said Mustapha Kamal Mustapha Abdallah al-Sultan, son of Kamal Mustafa Abdallah al-Sultan, Saddam’s son-in-law and secretary of the Republican Guard.

“So the families talk to each other all the time. We ask each other if anybody has heard anything or knows where anyone is.”

For many Iraqis, however, any treatment short of a slow painful death is too good for the stalwarts of the former regime.

“These relatives of Saddam are monsters,” said Assad Majid, from central Baghdad. “They stole businesses and raped girls. We were always afraid they would take my younger sister. There was no justice then but jungle law. If they accused you, maybe you could bribe them. If not, there were daily beatings and executions.”

The point is not lost on Saef Fadil Mahmoud, the son of Fadil Mahmud Gharib, a Baath Party regional command chairman and No 47 on the coalition’s most-wanted list.

“At least with the Americans I know I will see my father again, that he will not simply disappear,” he said, pointing to a photograph of him on the wall of his comfortable Baghdad sitting room.

Little else is certain. Unable to prise any information from the coalition — which describes the leading captives as “security internees,” allowing them “minimum rights” — families of the arrested men are finding comfort and strength in numbers.

They say their loved ones have disappeared into a legal void that they refer to as “Guantanamo II”.

“My brother is innocent,” said Thabid Mahmoud Gharib, brother of Fadil Mahmud Gharib, who surrendered on May 15. “If he is not innocent, they should send him to trial, not keep him for ever in these conditions without family or a lawyer.”

Some snippets about the welfare of the prisoners has reached the families. Muhammed Sad Abd Majid al-Faysal, who works at one of Baghdad’s main hospitals, is the son of Sa’ad Abd al-Majid al-Faysal, last on the list of 55.

“We heard from friends held with my father then freed,” he said. “They said they had to stand handcuffed with their hands in the air for long periods until they fainted. They had also been blindfolded and forced to listen to screams from neighbouring cells before being interrogated, although they could not be sure whether the screams were real or taped.”

Such allegations have prompted the British delegation to the coalition provisional authority to press for a review of the detention policy, establishing maximum periods of pre-trial detention and accurate reporting of the whereabouts of suspects to their families.