|
The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
|
September 17th,
2009 - US Closes its Largest Iraq Jail in the Heat of the Night |
|
US Closes its Largest Iraq Jail
in the Heat of the Night By Mehdi Lebouachera Agence France Presse September 17, 2009 Camp Bucca, Iraq - In the
heat of the night of the Iraqi desert, the US military transferred the last
180 prisoners out of Camp Bucca and padlocked its largest detention centre in
Iraq. High-risk prisoners were
relocated from the remote jail in southernmost Iraq to Camp Cropper near
Baghdad airport and Camp Taji, north of the capital, in Wednesday's overnight
operation. Hours before they moved out,
a dozen bearded prisoners took their final daily walk around the prison's
sun-baked courtyard wearing yellow jumpsuits and fingering Muslim prayer
beads. An armed guard perched in a
high tower watched as the men shuffled around. "Welcome to section 16.
There are a number of Al-Qaeda here and a number of extremists groups,"
Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth King told journalists invited to Camp Bucca one
last time. Lieutenant Latesha Ford
recalled that force had at times been needed to control the prisoners,
particularly in 2005 when four detainees were killed during riots. "Once or twice we had
to use force. Sometimes they insult us but the guards are trained and don't
answer," Ford said. The closure of Camp Bucca
marked a turning page for the US occupation of Iraq which has been rocked by
violence and a scandal over Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison. In 2004, photographs
surfaced showing naked and hooded prisoners at Abu Ghraib being beaten bloody
by their US guards and made to commit humiliating acts such as simulated
homosexual intercourse. Abu Ghraib - which had
already earned notoriety under the ousted regime of Saddam Hussein as a
centre for torture and execution where thousands lost their lives - has been
back under Iraqi control since February. The US military has
painfully tried to defend its detention policies amid repeated accusations
from human rights groups who have slammed it for holding prisoners without
charge. "We are at war,"
said prisons chief Brigadier General David Quantock. "Until January 1 of
this year we were operating under the UN security resolution which allowed us
to take security detainees," he said. "There are many short
memories out there, the insurgency was killing many of our soldiers, killing
innocent Iraqis civilians by the dozens. "Then all of a sudden
we're concerned ... that they may not have had the right judicial
review." The US military insists that
prisoners are treated with respect and that it has fully rehauled detention
facilities since the Abu Ghraib scandal to allow no room for prisoner abuse. Camp Bucca was the largest
US-run jail in Iraq, located in an isolated desert north of the border with
Kuwait and where temperatures soar above 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit)
in the summer. After the March 2003 US-led
invasion, the Americans set up the detention facility by pitching tents
around the site but as the anti-US insurgency grew so did the number of the
detainees and Camp Bucca. It developed into a
multi-section jail, tents were replaced by barracks surrounded by high walls,
barbed wire and watchtowers and the prison got its own water purification
plant, as well as factories to make ice and bricks. As many as 22,000 prisoners
were once held in Camp Bucca, with the largest number of suspects arrested
during a surge in military operations in 2007 to crack down on Al-Qaeda in
Iraq operatives. But the US military has been
releasing prisoners or handing them to Iraqi control since January as part of
an agreement with the Baghdad authorities, and ahead of a US pullout from the
country in 2011. The US military aims to
close Taji in early 2010 and Camp Cropper next August. The overall detainee
population in US jails has almost halved from 15,500 in January to around
8,398, from an overall high of 100,000 shortly after the invasion of
six-and-a-half years ago. With the prisoners gone,
Camp Bucca will serve as a joint US-Iraqi military base but after the last
American soldier leaves in 2011 it will become a full-fledged Iraqi naval
base. Copyright © 2009 AFP. External link: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gc0XFWcdVi5g6IzGq4ljD_UaUhUA |