500 Iraqis freed from US jails in Iraq

Obviously one reason for the release is that the US facilities are no doubt overflowing! Imagine that the occupiers have 25,000 in custody. Also, interesting is the last remark that 17 gang members are to be executed, just like that! Capital punishment with a vengeance.

500 Iraqis Freed From Crowded U.S. Detention Center
By CARA BUCKLEY
Published: November 9, 2007
BAGHDAD, Nov. 8 — Nearly 500 Iraqi detainees were released at a ceremony at a sprawling United States detention center in western Baghdad early Thursday, where they were urged by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to “start a new life, a different life from months ago.”

The ceremony, at Camp Victory in the dusty morning heat, marked one of the largest releases of Iraqi prisoners from American detention centers, which have become increasingly overcrowded since the American military buildup began in February.

In an interview, Mr. Maliki said he was also considering a general amnesty for most detainees.

“We are working on such a project,” he said moments after delivering a speech to rows of newly released detainees seated before him. “We are thinking of having a general amnesty except for those who have committed direct crimes against Iraqis, and against our infrastructure.”

The number of Iraqi detainees held by the American-led military forces has jumped to 25,800, from 16,000 in February, said Lt. Cmdr. K.C. Marshall, a detention operations officer.

Thousands more people are still detained in Iraqi prisons.

At Camp Victory on Thursday, several former detainees said that while they relished their release, they resented having been held at all. “I was detained in March 2007 for no reason,” said Tariq Jabbar, 25, a taxi driver from Zafaraniya, a neighborhood in southeast Baghdad.

Mr. Jabbar said he had been accused of attacking coalition forces with guns and improvised bombs, but insisted on his innocence, saying no weapons or the like had been found in his home. He said he had been treated well but had not been allowed to contact his wife or four children.

In a news release, the American-led forces said they were increasing the tempo of the releases to foster good will, but there is also pressure to free up space in the overcrowded prisons. About 6,300 detainees have been released so far this year, and the coalition forces say they have been releasing an average of 50 a day.

Commander Marshall said each of the released detainees had been screened by a review board and had to pledge to an Iraqi judge to uphold peace and behave well.

Also on Thursday, an American soldier died after being wounded Wednesday by a roadside bomb south of Baghdad, according to the military. The soldier’s name was not released.

In Baghdad, an Iraqi policeman was killed during an ambush, according to a hospital worker, and four unidentified bodies were found throughout the city, according to an official with the Interior Ministry.

In Mosul, north of Baghdad, a car bomb exploded, killing the driver and a woman nearby, a police official said. In Baquba, a city in troubled Diyala Province, American and Iraq forces found the remains of seven people in a house.

In Diwaniya, a city south of Baghdad, the security commissioner, Sheik Hussein al-Badri, announced that 17 gang members, some of them Iraqi policemen, had been sentenced to death for their role in an unspecified number of civilian and security force deaths.

Mudhafer al-Husaini contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Baquba, Diwaniya, Diyala and Mosul.

19 thousand Iraqis imprisoned by US in Iraq

There is virtually nothing said about the basic injustice of this system. All the attention has been on torture in US Iraqi prisons. However, as this article shows the whole system is without legal basis and flouts Iraqi laws. Prisoners are kept for months or even longer and never charged.

19,000 Iraqis Disappear Into U.S.-Run Prisons
DEPARTMENT No Comment
BY Scott Horton
PUBLISHED May 13, 2007
Last summer, the Associated Press and New York Times each did stories on the detention facilities operated by the United States inside of Iraq. The conclusions of each investigation were roughly the same. At the time, they noted roughly 14,000 Iraqis were being held in a “legal vacuum.” The detention facilities were chaotic, a large portion of the persons held were taken in on sweeps through their neighborhoods and were suspected and charged with nothing. No trials occur, but the detainees languish often for many months – in some cases for more than a year. “They may not be enemies when they enter these prisons,” one Army officer told me, “but you can count on it that they are insurgent sympathizers by the time they leave.” He was alluding not just to the treatment standards, which he called “nothing I would be proud of as an American,” but the fact that the facilities are allowed to function as recruitment and training centers for the insurgents. Politically uninvolved Iraqis enter. But to find a way of surviving in the brutal gang reality of the prisons, they cast their lot with insurgent groups.

The United States government views this as a “security detention” system that has nothing to do with justice. They are literally right about that. The system has no legal basis. When challenged for authority, spokesmen for U.S. Forces in Iraq constantly cite Security Council Resolution 1546. However, this resolution does not authorize the detentions. To the contrary, it, and the letter from Secretary of State Colin Powell which accompanied it, make clear that detentions must be made in accordance with the Iraqi Constitution and laws. And Iraqi law requires any detention to be justified before a magistrate in a matter of only a few days. One of the most striking features of the U.S. detention regime in Iraq is, however, its complete contempt for the requirements of Iraqi law.

But beyond this, it’s a formula for how to lose a civil war.

Today, McClatchy reports on the situation and finds the conditions are essentially the same as found by the AP and New York Times in the fall, except that the number of persons under detention has now spiraled to nineteen thousand. But the McClatchy piece puts its focus on ten thousand Iraqis who have simply gone missing – as family and friends are unable to establish any connection with persons in detention, even to establish whether they are simply still alive.

There’s no accurate count of the missing since the war began. Iraqi human rights groups put the figure at 15,000 or more, while government officials say 40 to 60 people disappeared each day throughout the country for much of last year, a rate equal to at least 14,600 in one year.

What happened to them is a frustrating mystery that compounds Iraq’s overwhelming sense of chaos and anarchy. Are they dead? Were they kidnapped or killed in some mass bombing? Is the Iraqi government or some militia group holding them? Were they taken prisoner by the United States, which is holding 19,000 Iraqis at its two main detention centers, at Camp Cropper and Camp Bucca?

You were wondering perhaps, how do you completely alienate and infuriate a population under military occupation? Well, this is how.



Harper's Magazine is an American journal of literature