December 06, 2008	Saturday	Zilhaj 7, 1429

BAGHDAD: They have outraged Iraqis and been condemned by human rights groups, but next year the prisons in which US forces hold thousands of Iraqis will be flung open under a US-Iraq security pact.

That worries both the US military, which fears hardened insurgents could again roam the streets, and rights campaigners who fear the opposite: that Iraqi authorities will transfer the detainees to Iraqi prisons – and maybe torture or execute them.

“We are concerned that we will most likely release dangerous detainees back into the communities of Iraq who have directly contributed to the deaths of not only Iraqi and Coalition Forces, but countless numbers of civilians,” said Major Neal Fisher, spokesman for US detainee operations.

“Every detainee in our custody came to us because they posed an imperative threat to the security and stability of Iraq.”

The security pact agreed with Iraq will give US troops a legal basis to remain in the country for three more years, replacing a UN mandate that covered the presence of foreign forces in Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion.

For the first time, Iraq will have authority over roughly 150,000 US troops in the country.

Iraq’s presidency council ratified the pact on Thursday, bringing it formally into effect until a referendum in July.

One of the powers the US military loses under the new deal is the right to detain Iraqis indefinitely without charge.

That means it will have to turn the 16,000-17,000 detainees currently in its custody over to Iraqi authorities in an orderly manner. Under Iraqi law, they will have to be tried or released.

For US officials, that is a headache. Thousands of prisoners, some of them former Sunni Arab insurgents or Shia militiamen, will be back on the streets. For most, there is simply not enough evidence to keep them under lock and key.

The US commander in charge of the detainee programme, Brigadier-General David Quantock, was unavailable for an interview, but he told USA Today that officials were working hard to build cases against dangerous detainees.

“We’re going to... make sure they stay behind bars,” he said.

The US military has released some 15,000 prisoners in the past year. Fisher said it plans to release 1,500 more a month.

For rights groups, there is a dark irony in US concerns about having to release Iraqis against whom there’s no evidence.

“Why are they detained if they don’t have adequate evidence against them?” asked Malcolm Smart, Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Programme.

“The numbers who’ve been released suggest that maybe there weren’t good reasons to hold a lot of those people in the first place ... We need a proper process of law and order – and that does mean not holding people in detention without trial.”

Joost Hiltermann, Iraq expert at the International Crisis Group, said possible mistreatment of the mostly Sunni Arab prisoners under Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s Shia-led government could stoke sectarian tensions.

Sunni Arab politicians say it doesn’t have to be that way, as long as they keep only those they have evidence against.—Reuters