Justice System Wins Few Hearts, Minds

As far as his family and friends know, Ahmed Bailasani is still sleeping on the sandy ground near Baghdad’s international airport, surrounded by U.S. troops and strands of barbed wire, a prisoner of the American authorities.

His friends -- thrown into custody with him and later released -- last saw the 50-something professor at “Camp Cropper” a month ago.

They and other former prisoners describe a sprawling facility where more than 1,000 Iraqi men sit and sleep under tent canopies in the open air, receiving a single meal per day. A few weeks ago, the detainees staged a one-day hunger strike to protest the conditions, former prisoners say.

The detainees are a mish-mash of men arrested in raids on suspected guerrilla safe houses, others caught up in neighborhood weapons searches, curfew violators and men suspected of armed robbery and other crimes.

Across Iraq, about 3,000 men are being held without formal charges in high-security facilities sealed off from public scrutiny, provoking criticism from human rights groups and fueling resentment against the U.S. occupation.

Two weeks after Bailasani’s detention in May, students and colleagues at the Islamic college where he teaches staged a protest seeking his release and an explanation of the charges he faces.

“He is at the airport prison, as far as we know -- maybe,” said Mohammed Abed Kubaisi, dean of the Islamic College at Baghdad University. “We tried to see him at the airport, but they stopped us at the military checkpoint” three miles away.

‘Short-Term Problems’

Officials with the U.S.-led occupation acknowledge they face “serious short-term problems” in housing the prisoners, providing them with legal representation and ensuring that those charged with crimes receive speedy trials.

“We’ve recognized the deficiencies and are working to correct them,” one senior official said. “For 35 years, there were massive violations of human rights. The current situation is an immense relief. Twenty-five million people are breathing easier.”

Under international law and edicts issued by L. Paul Bremer III, the top American administrator here, Iraqi criminal law remains in effect -- except those provisions that compromise the security of coalition troops. U.S. officials say the Geneva Convention allows occupying powers to suspend some civil liberties.

Last week, Amnesty International issued a report calling on the occupation authority to “ensure humane treatment and access to justice” for the detainees. The report said the watchdog group had received repeated accounts of mistreatment of detainees, including beatings and a lack of water and toilet facilities at detention centers.

Officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross said they had been granted access to “several thousand” detainees and had discussed conditions with U.S. authorities.

The Iraqi legal system, which could process those arrested for crimes covered by local penal codes, is barely functioning. Coalition officials said last week that two criminal courts are operating in Baghdad, a city of 5 million people. But at one of them, judges have processed only 12 defendants since reopening a month ago.

“We work on the cases which are referred to us by the coalition forces,” Judge Ibrahim Hindami said. “We have no say on what the coalition forces do.”

Several thousand soldiers captured before President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1 have been released. But many of the hundreds of people detained since then in U.S. raids against suspected guerrilla fighters are being tagged as prisoners of war and mixed with criminal suspects, according to interviewed detainees.

The absence of a system for providing information to the Iraqi public about detainees, as well as Iraqi abhorrence of some basic elements of American police and military procedure -- handcuffing suspects, taking property as evidence -- has helped erode much of the goodwill many felt toward U.S. forces.

Bailasani was taken away in a May 21 raid on the Baghdad offices of the Islamic Kurdistan Party, a legal group.

Friends and colleagues say they are perplexed by his arrest and detention -- others held with him were released. He is not a party member.

“He had just come to visit us when the American soldiers arrived and surrounded this place,” said Arselan Sattar, director of the Baghdad office of the party, which was founded as an underground movement opposing Saddam Hussein’s regime. After the dictator’s fall, the party established the office to take part in the negotiations in the capital over a future Iraqi government.

The soldiers fanned out throughout the building, apparently searching for weapons, Sattar said. They arrested Bailasani plus Sattar and half a dozen other party members and security guards.

For the next nine days, Sattar wore a tag that the soldiers had attached to his clothing -- a Defense Department form labeled “Enemy Prisoner of War.” It listed his name and time of detention. Under “circumstances of capture,” one GI scribbled: “Raid on Fedayeen safe house,” referring to paramilitary groups loyal to Hussein.

Claim of Humiliation

The soldiers led Sattar, Bailasani and the others out in handcuffs, their heads covered in hoods and their mouths taped shut, Sattar said. Bailasani’s turban was yanked off his head, and his cleric’s robes were ripped to shreds.

“They humiliated the professor,” Sattar said. “When we said we were hot, they poured water on us as if we were animals.”

Sattar was interrogated by a soldier who said the party offices had been under surveillance and had raised suspicions because of the large number of visitors.

“I explained to him that we are new to this neighborhood, that no one knows us, and it is the custom for people to come and pay their respects,” Sattar said. Eventually, he was taken to the airport. The holding facility was so crowded that some of the prisoners didn’t fit under the tents and were exposed to the baking summer sun.

“We cut pieces of the tent and put them together with food cartons to make beds,” Sattar said. He added that he saw children as young as 12. He was assigned a number: 7,981.

Student Ali Wahed, 22, was arrested about a week later and also taken to Camp Cropper. He was prisoner No. 9,307. He had been arrested at the mosque where he is a guard.

“First they told us we were a criminal gang,” Wahed said. The soldiers said Wahed and the other mosque guards had robbed a neighbor’s house. Wahed said he was beaten, handcuffed and dragged along the ground by the soldiers.

He, too, said he received a single meal a day at the airport prison. “It was very hot,” Wahed said. “There is nothing to do but sleep.”

At one point, he was taken from the airport to another camp, where they brought an Iraqi woman to see him.

“She told them I was not one of the robbers,” Wahed said. Some time later, back at the airport facility, “a woman soldier started to call out numbers. She called my number and many others. Some went to Basra, some to another prison. I was set free.”

A senior official with the occupation authority said it was working to close Camp Cropper and move the prisoners to other facilities -- an effort hampered by the looting of many Iraqi prisons when Hussein fell.

The official added that the administration here would also work to grant family members access to the prisoners “in a few weeks’ time.”

The official said the Geneva Convention allows occupying armies to deny prisoners visitation rights under emergency circumstances.