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Officials: Iraqi Detainees Used Prisons To Recruit

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The Associated Press

Published: July 27, 2008

BAGHDAD - For years, extremist Iraqi detainees in U.S. custody held self-styled Islamic courts and tortured or killed inmates who refused to join them, military officials said, disclosing new details about the use of American prisons as recruiting grounds for the insurgency.

The problem became the main catalyst for a decision to separate moderate detainees from the extremists, part of a broader reform package aimed at correcting widespread U.S. prison abuses that sparked international criticism.

"We were having people who weren't insurgents who were being forced to be insurgents because of the power of these courts, the power of al-Qaida and other extremist groups," said Lt. Col. Kenneth Plowman, a spokesman for Task Force 134, which operates coalition detention facilities in Iraq.

He told The Associated Press on Friday that the jailhouse Sharia courts formed, despite the presence of U.S guards, to enforce an extreme interpretation of Islamic law. They were used to convict moderate inmates, who were tortured or killed, he said.

In comments published in the Sierra Vista Herald in Arizona, Brig. Gen. Rodney L. Johnson, commander of the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, put the number of detainees tried by the courts in the double-digits.

The courts were eradicated and none has been detected in six months, although some gang-related issues persist, Plowman said.

"We have a detainee population of about 21,000. You're gonna have extremists who will find a way to communicate and to form these kind of organizations," he added.

The classification of detainees into moderate and extremist groups was part of sweeping reforms launched by the former commander of detainee operations, Maj. Gen. Douglas Stone, in a bid to overcome a series of scandals over the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody.

It also was in line with a new counterinsurgency strategy by the Americans that focused on isolating militants to stem support for the fighting.

Allegations of abuse at U.S. prisons escalated in 2004 with the release of pictures of grinning U.S. soldiers posing with detainees at the Abu Ghraib facility west of Baghdad.

The problem was concentrated at Camp Bucca and the courts were led by al-Qaida in Iraq, Plowman said.

•Iraqi politicians have 48 hours to offer changes to a draft provincial elections law that has left Kurdish leaders at odds with the central government and delayed local elections planned for this fall. The elections could be put off until December or later if a compromise isn't reached by Thursday.

•Iraqi authorities imposed a vehicle ban in northwest Baghdad, a routine precaution against car bombings ahead of a Shiite religious festival Tuesday. The ban lasts through Wednesday.

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