WORLD> Middle East
US military closes largest detention camp in Iraq
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-09-17 09:11

In May of that year, US authorities thwarted a massive escape attempt when they discovered a 600-foot tunnel leading out of the prison. Dug with makeshift tools fashioned from buckets and tent material 15 feet underground, the escape route reached beyond the compound fence, with an opening hidden beneath a floorboard.

It was uncovered after guards found dirt in latrines and other places. The discovery followed the escape a month earlier of 11 detainees who slipped through a hole in fence at the camp. Ten were eventually recaptured.

After the abuses at Abu Ghraib, the US military implemented a series of reforms, and authorities at Bucca strove to make it a model facility, with closer oversight by commanders and better training for guards. Detainees were segregated based on threat risk, nationality and religious affiliation, and many were enrolled in classes to learn to read and write.

On Wednesday, the camp was eerily empty except for those men remaining in a high-security area known as Compound 16. Vacant units were still decorated with murals painted by detainees. Some showed tropical islands and one depicted a man crouching meekly on the ground.

Many detainees spent their days working at a brick factory on the prison grounds or receiving vocational training. A sign posted at one gate listed basic rights under the Geneva Conventions.

International human rights groups have expressed alarm over the transfer of detainees to an Iraqi judicial system they say falls well short of international standards of fairness. And abuses have occurred in Iraq's prisons, say groups like Human Rights Watch.

"As the Americans dump more detainees in an already overwhelmed Iraqi system, the opportunities for abuse will only grow," said Samer Muscati, a researcher on Iraq at the New York-based rights group.

Camp Taji, north of Baghdad, is scheduled to be turned over to Iraqi control on Jan. 10. Camp Cropper will be the last detention facility handed over, in August of next year.

Cropper, where Saddam Hussein was held before he was executed, houses former members of Saddam's government and other high-value detainees. Among them is Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali" for the strikes he ordered against Kurds in the 1980s.

Over six years, some 100,000 detainees passed through the system. The highest its population reached at one time was 26,000 in November 2007 after the US troop surge. Of those, Camp Bucca housed the most: 22,000.

Iraqi officials say they have evidence that some released detainees are returning to violence, either in insurgent groups or criminal gangs that have unleashed a frenzy of crime in the Iraqi capital.

A senior Iraqi investigator looking into the truck bombings that killed around 100 people last month outside the foreign and finance ministries in Baghdad said the man who carried out one the attacks was a former detainee at Camp Bucca.

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