Focus on future of detainees

Hundreds of relatives stand at the menacing barbed-wire entrance to the heavily fortified Abu Ghraib prison in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad waiting for a chance to see loved ones inside. Following the release of pictures last month showing human rights violations against prisoners, relatives outside the notorious jail believe that the estimated 8,000 prisoners being held in facilities across Iraq should be released. “Where are the human rights?” asked Bedriya Khaluf, 50, a mother of four sons, who she says are being detained at the jail. “How can I know how they have been treated here? I just want them to be freed.” Khaluf said her sons were taken in the middle of the night from their home in Diyala, northwest of Baghdad seven months ago, and have not been charged. If the detainees must stay behind bars, their relatives feel Iraqis will do a better job of guarding prisoners than Coalition forces have done in the last year. Notwithstanding 35 years of torture and human rights abuses committed in places like Abu Ghraib under former president Saddam Hussein. “No matter how bad they may be, Iraqi people should run these prisons,” Ibrahim Amed, 29, told IRIN, as he waited to visit his brother. “I don’t think the prisoners are being treated fairly right now.” His brother was detained seven months ago on suspicion of making a bomb, Amed said. But the bomb-making material was actually being used by his fisherman brother to kill fish in a commercial fishing operation, Amed said. CALL FOR IRAQIS TO OVERSEE PRISONS With the scheduled handover of sovereignty just two weeks away, interim president Sheikh Ghazi al-Yawar and Baktiar Amin, Iraq’s new human rights minister are calling for prisons to be turned over to Iraqi authorities. US-led Coalition authorities would still oversee the operations, Amin said. A committee of ministers and Coalition officials will meet to discuss the issue, Amin said. A US spokesman for prison authorities was not immediately available for comment. “We have to start a dialogue about the fate of the detention centres,” Amin told IRIN. “We would like them to be returned to the Iraqi side. But we have to make sure prisoners are secured in a manner that they won’t escape.” Iraq’s penal code also needs to be reformed to curb human rights abuses, Amin said. Nevertheless, he said he believes Iraqis could do a better job than the Coalition. “It’s not an easy issue, and there has been a pattern of systematic torture for decades,” Amin said. “We have to get them [prison guards] to respect international norms.” Such norms do seem to be acknowledged, despite the past. Former president Saddam Hussein is the highest profile prisoner who would be affected by the outcome of the discussion. Iraqis at the entrance to the prison say he should be tried and punished by an Iraqi court of law. “Those who committed a crime should be tried and punished, even my president,” Amed said. “If they release people without trying them, we’ll have murderers on the streets. It will be dangerous for us.” The situation is complicated by the fact that Saddam Hussein opened the jails and let all the prisoners free just before the US bombing campaign started in April 2003. Some of those he released were political prisoners, but many were common criminals, Coalition officials have said in the past, blaming them for some of the upsurge in looting and violence around the country. DEALING WITH PRISONERS Despite the chaos of the past 14 months, some local courts are already working around Iraq, so prisoners should be charged, said Khalid Hamed Haza, 22. Haza told IRIN that three of his cousins had been in jail for five months for allegedly for being involved in the insurgency against Coalition troops. “I can’t say if they’re guilty or not guilty, but they were taken from their mechanic workshops without anyone saying what they had done,” Haza said. “They should be allowed their day in court.” Regardless of who oversees Iraq's prisons after 30 June, some decision urgently needs to be made, Nada Doumani, a spokeswoman for the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) told IRIN. Iraq is not a signatory to some international human rights conventions, meaning any agreement between Iraqi officials and Coalition troops should clearly spell out which law is in force. However, Coalition troops also have an estimated 1,480 “security detainees” not covered by the Geneva Conventions, Amin said. “We’re not getting any clear answer on what will happen from our interlocutors. This issue should be clear for everybody,” Doumani said. “Will they have two separate sets of law? We just want to know the status of the prisoners.” Only with regular human rights visits will the prisons be reformed over time, Amin said. “There’s the risk [that Iraqi guards also will commit human rights abuses] but we had that abuse at Abu Ghraib already,” Amin said. “It’s important that we do regular visits. We need an antenna in the prison and we need to educate the people working there on how to behave.” HELP AT ABU GHRAIB Since pictures of prisoner abuse came out in the international media, the human rights ministry has opened an office in the prison, which has improved the situation, Amin said. Seven lawyers, a psychiatrist and a social worker are available daily. Someone visits the security detainees once a week, he said. An estimated 1,500 prisoners are in the criminal section of the prison, according to the Human Rights Minister. “We had no knowledge of what happened before, but torture is unacceptable in any time, in any place,” Amin maintained. “We have asked for a rapid trial and fair punishment of the perpetrators of this crime [torture of Iraqi prisoners].” Back outside the prison, US troops in a bridge-building exercise with angry locals, the last three weeks have been busy arranging visits for family members, another right mentioned in the Geneva Conventions. “I’ve been dealing with more than 200 people per day,” Corporal Dennis Bryan, a US soldier with Kilo Company of the Third Battalion of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, told IRIN. “My job is to get as many people through the line as I can.”