The US yesterday freedmore than 300 detainees from Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib prison, in the first of a series of releases that should see the number of security prisoners in Iraq halved by the time a new Iraqi government assumes sovereignty. On Thursday Donald Rumsfeld, US defence secretary, urged Major General Geoffrey Miller, who has assumed responsibility for prisons in Iraq, to speed the release programme. Gen Miller, who was appointed to try to repair damage caused by revelations of widespread abuse and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by US military guards, has said that the current prisoner population of around 4,000 will be reduced to below 2,000 by the middle of next month.
| Ok, I suppose, as long as we keep the right 2,000. |
The furore over prisoner abuse has focused attention on US forces in Iraq and their ability to deal with detainees after June 30, when an Iraqi government is due to assume sovereignty. A senior British official yesterday said control over Iraqi prisons should rest with the new Iraqi caretaker government but indicated that the US had yet to reach this conclusion. The status of Iraqi prisons is one of the thorny issues being addressed in negotiations over a new UN Security Council resolution, the first draft of which the US and UK are hoping to present in two weeks. "The logic is that overall control of prisons rests with that government," said the official. "The US is busily addressing the issue."
| Euros are assuming that the Iraqis will be less rough on these prisoners than us. Might be wishful thinking. |
With the US still standing reeling from the scandal over the treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison, the UN resolution could expose other difficulties American forces will face in dealing with detainees. According to the senior British official, once a "sovereign" Iraqi government is in charge, the state of armed conflict will end and with it the ability to take prisoners of war. The question, said the official, is whether US forces could detain Iraqis suspected of attacking them or would have to hand them over to Iraqi forces. The US and its allies in the Group of Eight developing countries yesterday clashed openly over Iraq, as foreign ministers argued about how much authority the proposed interim government would exercise after the June 30 transfer of sovereignty, Guy Dinmore reports from Washington. Pre-war transatlantic tensions surfaced again, with the foreign ministers of France, Russia and Canada telling a Washington news conference that their countries would not send troops to Iraq even if their demands were to be met in a UN Security Council resolution.
| So why are they even at the table? |
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