US-held Iraqis Cry For Help, Grill Rights Minister

"Are we an independent country or not, why don't you rescue us from this hell?" one detainee asked Iraqi interim Human Rights Minister Bakhtiar Amin from behind a high fence, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Sunday, July 18.

"Please sir, please, I have nine children, the Americans just descended on me and arrested me as I was grazing my sheep," said a bearded man wearing a grey dishdash (traditional robe) and tattered plastic slippers.

"I have been here for 10 months and do not know why!"

"Aren't you working in human rights? Isn't this an independent country now? Why are we being left here?" cried another man.

"What's wrong with resisting occupation? If the Iraqis went to America, wouldn't the Americans fight?" a third detainee wondered.

The scorching afternoon sun coupled with hot winds forced some of the detainees to strip down to their shorts and cover their heads with wet towels or baseball caps.

They change into yellow jumpsuits only when they are bused four times a week to another tented area to meet with their loved ones twice a month.

Is Occupation Over?

The detainees, some as young as 15, clutch the metal fence screaming, pleading with and at times hectoring Amin, who Friday, July 16, was the first Iraqi official to visit the camp, initially set up in March 2003 by the US military to hold so-called enemy prisoners of war.

The minister and three members of his staff were accompanied by deputy commander for detainee operations in Iraq, Major General Geoffrey Miller, and other US military officials, who stood back watching Amin's encounter with the prisoners.

"I would have loved to meet you without barriers. We have come to learn more about your conditions and to improve them," says the soft-spoken Amin, a Kurd who spent most of his 40-some years outside Iraq.

He struggled to complete his phrase as he is interrupted by the shouts and jeers of some men.

"Please take us away from here, is the occupation not over?" screams a burly, bare-chested man in shorts with a pink towel wrapped around his head.

"Are we prisoners of war or civilian detainees?"

The minister told them that under UN resolution 1546, the issue of detainees is the joint responsibility of the new interim government and US-led forces.

A young man cuts him off mockingly: "Don't kid yourself brother, there is no justice with these people, we should have stuck with Saddam Hussein."

The detainees, including some 42 foreigners, are divided among four of the facility's six blocks surrounded by two ridges of sand with a trench in between.

"Please take the telephone number of my family and tell them I am fine," pleads a grey-haired man dressed in black T-shirt and pants.

Amin promised that all cases of Iraqi detainees will be examined by an Iraqi court soon and that his ministry will set up an office at the camp to assist them.

By the end of July, the board charged with releasing or referring detainee cases to Iraq's central criminal court, set up by the US-led occupation early this year, will include six government representatives in addition to the current three US military officers, Miller said.

All detainees at Camp Bucca and the other estimated 2,400 held at Baghdad's infamous Abu Ghraib prison were recently issued charge sheets following pressure from the International Committee for the Red Cross.

On June 14, the ICRC told Washington that Saddam and other Iraqi detainees must either be released or charged by June 30.

Most have been accused of attacks against US-led forces or weapons possession, said the American official.

Despite the American military's eagerness to play by the book in the wake of the Abu Ghraib abuse scandals, the medium-term prospects for a resolution to the prisoner issue look bleak, according to AFP.

The US military says it now plans to expand and transform Camp Bucca, named after a firefighter who died in the 9/11 attacks, into a long-term detention facility for the most serious offenders that would include those held in Abu Ghraib.

The army had planned to tear down the facility after the official end of hostilities in May 2003, but scrapped the idea due to the scale and intensity of the anti-occupation attacks.

The Iraqi abuse scandal exploded onto the world stage on April 29 after the CBS news network published several graphic photos of Iraqi detainees tortured and sexually abused by American soldiers at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.

In a damning report presented to the administration in February, U.S. Major General Antonio Taguba found numerous "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses" at the prison complex

http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2004-07/18/article06.shtml