US Remakes Stone Jails in Iraq

BAGHDAD — Once a byword for torture and disgrace, theAmerican-run detention system in Iraq has improved, even itscritics say, as the military has incorporated it into a largercounterinsurgency strategy that seeks to avoid mistreatment thatcould create new enemies. But these gains may soon be at risk. Thousands of detainees are tobe turned over to the Iraqi government, some perhaps as early asthe end of the year, a further step toward Iraqi sovereignty. Yethowever tarnished America’s reputation may be for itstreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay, thereputation of many Iraqi prisons is worse. “The Americans are better than Ministry of Interiorprisons,” said Mahmoud Abu Dumour, a former detainee fromFalluja, the Sunni stronghold west of Baghdad. “They willtorture you. Maybe you will die. With the Americans, if you enterAbu Ghraib, they will only wage psychological war on you.” Already, Human Rights Watch has criticized the military fortransferring some convicted juveniles to Iraqi custody, where theyare kept in what the group said are abusive conditions. Criticism also remains high that the American military detains toomany people, deprives them of due process and holds them too long,even if innocent. Many are taken in only because they were near aninsurgent attack. While nearly all of the more than 21,000 detainees in Iraq are inAmerican custody,Stone Table Bases, who runs detaineeoperations countrywide, is proceeding with a broad experiment torestructure it. His goal is to use the system of detention centersas another front in the counterinsurgency war, trying to reduce thelikelihood that they become a recruiting ground for militants. “The extremists owned the battlefield of the mind,”said General Stone, a Marine Reserve counterinsurgency expert whotook responsibility for the detention system last spring. Before hearrived, moderate and extremist detainees were usually mixed,turning the American-run detention facilities into what he called a“jihadi university.” General Stone’s goal now is to isolate those he believes areextremists, who are a minority of detainees, and persuade the otherdetainees that they will have better lives if they keep away fromthose who preach jihad. It is part of the effort to bring detentionpolicy here in line with American military strategy that seeks toseparate insurgents from civilians, mentally and physically. General Stone’s goal is to move detainees, particularly moremoderate ones, through the system faster by instituting reviewboards to hear each detainee’s case. So far, these boardshave released at least 8,400 people. He has also pushed to expandpaid work programs, like carpentry shops, brick factories andlaundries, as well as educational programs, especially for juveniledetainees and the many illiterate adults. It is difficult to assess this drive toward improvement. Outsidersare forbidden to interview detainees. The International Committeeof the Red Cross has regular access to the facilities, but theUnited Nations and human rights groups say they have not beenpermitted to enter. Still, a reporter’s visits to Camp Cropper and Camp Bucca,the two main American detention facilities; interviews withAmerican military officers in charge of the facilities; andconversations with former detainees and human rights advocates makeclear that the system has been changed in several important ways. These changes were seen as vital after the images of prisonerhumiliation and abuse at Abu Ghraib created fury throughout theArab world. Recidivism is down: since General Stone’s arrivallast year, just 28 of those released have been jailed again. Thatnumber, less than 1 percent of the total released, reflectsconsiderably fewer repeat detentions than before the administrativehearings and other reforms, when recapture rates ran at 5 to 10percent, according to military lawyers. Riots, which once regularly traumatized Camp Bucca, have tailedoff. The last was in September. Violence among detainees, includingbeatings and killings, is down as well. The last escape attempt wasin November 2007, when military police officers found an80-foot-long tunnel with an exit outside the compound. In interviews, former detainees praised the new hearing system,which they said allowed them for the first time to tell their sideof the story. “I would consider this committee a fair and beautifulcommittee,” said Sheik Riyadh, who was released in earlyApril from Camp Bucca, near Iraq’s southern border withKuwait, after three and a half years in detention. “If onlythey had formed it when I was first detained. Then the detainee wasnot sent to any committee. But this committee works to releasepeople.” But the innovations have not erased memories of the Abu Ghraibscandals, nor have they mollified the many Iraqis who continue tobe arrested and who maintain their innocence. “I had not done anything,” said Mahmoud Abu Dumour, whowas detained in Falluja in November 2004 and released withoutexplanation in July 2007, before General Stone’sadministrative hearing system was in place. “It was very nice that my daughter recognized me,” headded, his arms around his 3-year-old girl. “She was 10 daysold when the Americans took me.” Human rights advocates familiar with the new system say theybelieve conditions have improved considerably since Abu Ghraib. Butthey contend that those gains do not change the underlying legalproblems with the detentions themselves and the lack of legalrights afforded to detainees. Suspects are often brought in, with little or no physical evidence,because they were near an attack on American or Iraqi troops orbased on statements by informants, who often have their own reasonsfor lying. Detainees have no right to a lawyer nor can theychallenge the grounds for their detention. Of the total detainee population, which peaked at 25,600 lastOctober and which was reported on Sunday to be at 21,680, only 10to 15 percent will ever stand trial, military lawyers said. Theaverage detainee is interned for 333 days, and as of March, about1,500, or 5 percent, had been in detention for more than threeyears, said Lt. Col. Rodney Faulk, of the 300th Military PoliceBrigade, who runs Camp Bucca day to day. No one knows how many of those detained are innocent of any crime,but General Stone said he believed that only about 8,000 detaineesas of March were extremists who posed a continuing security risk.“One-third are genuinely continuing and imperative securityrisks,” General Stone said then. “But that meanstwo-thirds are not, or at least remain a question mark.” Although the American military has the legal right to detainsuspects in Iraq under a United Nations resolution, human rightsadvocates say the Americans have interpreted the resolution farmore broadly than was ever intended. “Security detention is an emergency measure, and emergencymeasures you should try to use temporarily,” said JohnSifton, executive director of One World Research, a human rightsorganization based in Los Angeles. “These things have a way of becoming addictive,” hesaid. “It’s great the U.S. is trying to improve things.But remember, insurgency is a crime, and you should prosecuteit.” The Detention Centers Eager to erase the stain of the Abu Ghraib scandal, the UnitedStates emptied that complex, which had a notorious reputation underSaddam Hussein, too, and turned it over to the Iraqi government in2006. Of the two major American-run facilities, Camp Bucca, the larger,holds 18,580 detainees. Camp Cropper has 3,100, and that includesall the juveniles in the system as well as so-called high-valuedetainees — Mr. Hussein was kept there before his executionin 2006 — and about 15 women, according to figures releasedon Sunday. About 80 percent are Sunni and 20 percent are Shiite.Just 221 of the detainees in Bucca and Cropper combined are fromoutside Iraq, a tiny percentage of the total number that themilitary views as extremists. Recent visits to both detention centers, along with interviews offormer detainees, depicted a system whose conditions increasinglyresemble those of the American civilian model, in general treatmentif not in rights. On a late winter day at Camp Bucca, the detainees whom a reportercould see appeared to be in good health and at ease. Some playedvolleyball or table tennis. Others sat in the sun reading theKoran. One man tended a bottle of milk that he was fermenting intohomemade yogurt. Former inmates at Bucca, however, have complained in interviewsabout the food there, which they described as scant and sometimesnauseating. When detainees arrive at Bucca, they are quickly profiled toseparate those identified as moderates from those thought to beextremists. The procedure, which was under way before General Stonearrived, has been expanded so the military obtains a roughpsychological assessment of each detainee. Former detainees say thechange has made them feel safer. “When the prisoner entered, he was terrified, and he foundtakferis surrounded him and taught him takferi ways,” saidAbu Yahya, a former detainee who now lives on Falluja’soutskirts, using the Arabic word for Sunni Muslim fanatics. He saidhe spent more than three years in detention and was beaten severaltimes by extremist detainees. “If anyone objected, he wouldbe beaten and attacked, and sometimes he would die.” A more recent innovation, popular with families living far away, isvideoconferencing. Now, families who cannot travel from Baghdad toBucca to see an interned relative can go to Camp Cropper and belinked by video. The Release Boards Detainees say the most important change has been the creation ofadministrative boards to determine whether an individual remains an“imperative security risk” — the legal term usedin the United Nations approval for American forces to detainIraqis. If a detainee is no longer deemed to be a risk, he can bereleased. Detainees appear before a three-person panel, with no lawyer. Inalmost all the hearings, the detainees deny any wrongdoing,military lawyers say. They often change their accounts to try tosay the right thing to obtain release. It took months, the lawyers said, for the Americans to concludethat the Iraqi denials were a reflexive survival strategyinculcated under Mr. Hussein, not simply an effort to obfuscate.During Mr. Hussein’s rule, people were often tortured untilthey confessed; then the confession was used against them. So thereis a deep reluctance to admit any shade of guilt, even if the costis an inconsistency in the detainee’s testimony that cantrouble American hearing officers. Now, roughly 45 to 50 percent of those who have hearings arerecommended for release. Although the goal is for each detention to be reviewed every fourto six months, interviews with detainees suggest the process ismore haphazard. Sadiq Jaber Hashim, 43, a Shiite merchant in Baghdad, wasrecommended for release after his first appearance before a hearingpanel. A speaker of English and Turkish and a paramedic bytraining, Mr. Hashim tried to persuade his captors from the momentof detention that he had done nothing wrong. But only at his firsthearing — eight months later — did anyone listen. “The accusation was not that I was a terrorist, but that Iknew some terrorists,” Mr. Hashim said. Because he wasShiite, he said, he was thought to have ties to the Mahdi Armymilitia of the cleric Moktada al-Sadr. “I said, ‘I hate the Mahdi Army; they tried to kidnapme in 2006.’ But they did not listen,” he said. While the hearings have succeeded in reducing the detaineepopulation, to a visiting journalist they were difficult to follow,and the detainees often seemed to have little understanding of theprocess. The reasons for detention are frequently a jumble ofallegations by soldiers and informers contained in documentsavailable only to the hearing board. The complications of the process were on display at a hearing inMarch, when a detainee in Bucca who had been accused of taking partin displacing families and planting bombs in the troubled Doradistrict of Baghdad, made his case. “You were captured as a suspected Al Qaeda member,”said Maj. Charles Leonard, chairman of the administrative board andan acquisition officer from Hanscom Air Force Base inMassachusetts. “I am innocent,” the detainee said. “We have evidence that you were a target because ofinformation we gathered.” “No, no, I was in my house.” “We have evidence that you were involved in displacing andkilling Sunnis and Christians in your local area.” “I was an employee in the Ministry of Education.” “Did you serve as a guard?” “Yes.” “What will you do if you get released?” “I’ll go back to the same job, and I have a shop withmy brother.” The detainee left, and Major Leonard sighed as he looked down atthe file. “This is one of the tougher ones,” he said.“There are two allegations against him, but no physicalevidence. There’s been no problems with him whatsoever indetention.” His fellow hearing officers nodded. All three voted for release. Evaluating the System Looming on the horizon is the end of the United Nationsauthorization of the American involvement in Iraq, including thedetention system. The authorization expires Dec. 31 and the UnitedNations is not expected to take up the issue again, leaving it tonegotiations between the United States and Iraq. But the outlookfor such a deal, which involves sweeping issues of troopwithdrawal, as well as detention and other aspects of an Americanpresence in Iraq, is in doubt. On Sunday, for instance, the Iraqi government said it would notaccept an American draft proposal on the issues. The detention issues at play cover difficult legal and ethicalground, so much so that no American official interviewed for thisarticle was willing to speak on the record about the discussions. At the heart of the problem are all the so-called securitydetainees, who make up an overwhelming majority of the 21,000people in American custody. They are the people who have beenarrested because, in the judgment of the United States military,they could present some threat, even if they are not accused ofextremist activity. It is expected that Iraqi officials, who are now completing newprisons, will seek to take more control of detention operations,including taking custody of at least some of the current Iraqidetainees. That prompts the question characterized by one Americanmilitary lawyer as “What do we do with the redpopulation?” or those detainees the Americans consider to beextremists — the 8,000 detainees that General Stone referredto as a continuing threat. Even as the Americans try to overcome their reputation for pastmistreatment, serious allegations of torture and substandardconditions in some Iraqi prisons persist. Iraq’s InteriorMinistry detention centers, which hold the largest numbers ofpretrial detainees, have been run primarily by Shiites and have arecord of overcrowding and abuse against the predominantly Sunnidetainee population. There have also been many allegations of torture. In cases in 2005and 2006, it was American and British soldiers who rescued beatenand starved prisoners. “If the coalition is going to turn over detainees, there arereal Convention Against Torture issues,” said Kevin Lanigan,a former Army Reserve judge advocate in Iraq who is director of thelaw and security program at Human Rights First, a rightsorganization. He was referring to the international Convention Against Torture,which among other things prohibits nations that have signed it fromturning detainees over to countries where there are“substantial grounds” to believe that they would betortured. Iraq has also signed the convention. In the end, there is some speculation that a compromise will bereached that allows the American military to continue to detain andhold at least some of the people it deems security risks. In themeantime, the American military is pushing to review as manydetention cases as possible with an eye toward quickly shrinkingthe overall detainee population. Whatever the result, it is unlikely to meet American standards ofjustice or satisfy human rights groups. Sheik Riyadh, for example, was released because of the new hearingpanel at Camp Bucca. Still, he found little justice in the threeand a half years he spent in detention. “I like the idea of democracy in America,” he said.“But I have not touched it yet.”