Basra, Iraq ? The British have opened a police academy on a World War II-era Royal Air Force base west of downtown Basra, where more than 1,300 recruits and officers are enrolled in a 10-week course. The class emphasizes forensics in an effort to encourage officers to try to solve crimes and abandon the Saddam Hussein-era focus on extracting confessions from suspects.

“Many of them have been in the force for many years with no formal training,” said Martin Quinn, the school’s head instructor, who in civilian life is a policeman from Sheffield, England.

The challenge of breaking long-held habits was evident during a recent human rights lecture.

“All countries must forbid torture, first of all, and if torture happens, there must be an investigation of those cases,” said Omar Abdul Dalil, an Iraqi human rights worker who, along with a pair of Danish police detectives, taught a class of about 20 veteran policemen in a spartan, concrete classroom.

“Even though there is a political mess in the country, if a high-ranking officer orders you to mistreat a prisoner, you are not going to follow that order.”

Hands quickly shot up.

“What if the person is very bad and makes trouble in the prison?” asked a visibly exasperated lieutenant.

“You can’t expect them to do things exactly like they are done in America or Europe, but my impression is that they are absorbing these ideas,” said Kaj Kristensen, 60, a retired detective from Copenhagen.

“Sometimes they have a difficult time when they get back to the stations because their superiors don’t always like new ways of doing things. That is why we focus on mid-level and junior officers.”

After the class adjourned, some Iraqi officers said they were skeptical that the lessons were relevant to police work in their country.

“This is general information. We know it. But we cannot apply it here,” said Maj. Naseer Abdul-Jabbar, 40. “Terrorists want to kill me and my family, so I cannot treat their rights as an ordinary thief.”