The US is holding about 10,500 prisoners in Iraq, more than double the number held in October, the US military says.
About 100 of those prisoners are under age 18, said army Lieutenant Colonel Guy Rudisill, a spokesman for detention operations in Iraq.
Five months ago, the military said it was holding about 4,300 prisoners in Iraq. The growth in the prison population has come amid a lingering insurgency in Iraq and despite the formal transfer of power to an interim Iraqi government last June.
The number of US-held prisoners in Iraq declined last summer after international outrage over abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. Revelations of abuse have continued since then; on Friday, the Army released documents detailing a half-dozen prison abuse investigations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The reports said soldiers had stripped prisoners naked and released them to walk home, beaten detainees with their fists and feet, broke a prisoner's jaw and forced detainees to exercise to the point of exhaustion. One investigator concluded prisoners at a temporary jail near Mosul were systematically mistreated and possibly tortured in December 2003.
Spokesmen for US Combined Forces Command-Afghanistan did not respond Monday and Tuesday to e-mailed questions about the number of prisoners there. The military estimated in January that it was holding about 500 people in Afghanistan.
A human rights group was issuing a report Wednesday saying the rising number of detainees increases the risk that the prisoners will be mistreated. The report from New York-based Human Rights First says secrecy about the prisoners is also increasing, citing the refusal of military officials to discuss the number of prisoners in Afghanistan since January.
"We're seriously concerned about overburdening of what the Pentagon has called transient facilities, the field prisons," Human Rights First lawyer Deborah Pearlstein said Tuesday. "These are places where conditions are terrible, where the worst abuses occurred from 2002 to 2004, and ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] access is limited to nonexistent."
About 1,200 of the prisoners in Iraq are being held in temporary facilities at forward bases, Rudisill said. He said the other 9,300 are being held in three permanent prisons: the Abu Ghraib jail near Baghdad, Camp Cropper at the Baghdad International Airport and Camp Bucca in southern Iraq.
In December, US officials said they were holding about 65 prisoners age 16 and under. The 100 or so under-18 prisoners in custody now are being held separately from adult prisoners, Rudisill said.
Nauru has started selling passports to fund climate action, but is so far struggling to attract new citizens to the low-lying, largely barren island in the Pacific Ocean. Nauru, one of the world’s smallest nations, has a novel plan to fund its fight against climate change by selling so-called “Golden Passports.” Selling for US$105,000 each, Nauru plans to drum up more than US$5 million in the first year of the “climate resilience citizenship” program. Almost six months after the scheme opened in February, Nauru has so far approved just six applications — covering two families and four individuals. Despite the slow start —
‘THEY KILLED HOPE’: Four presidential candidates were killed in the 1980s and 1990s, and Miguel Uribe’s mother died during a police raid to free her from Pablo Escobar Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe has died two months after being shot at a campaign rally, his family said on Monday, as the attack rekindled fears of a return to the nation’s violent past. The 39-year-old conservative senator, a grandson of former Colombian president Julio Cesar Turbay (1978-1982), was shot in the head and leg on June 7 at a rally in the capital, Bogota, by a suspected 15-year-old hitman. Despite signs of progress in the past few weeks, his doctors on Saturday announced he had a new brain hemorrhage. “To break up a family is the most horrific act of violence that
North Korean troops have started removing propaganda loudspeakers used to blare unsettling noises along the border, South Korea’s military said on Saturday, days after Seoul’s new administration dismantled ones on its side of the frontier. The two countries had already halted propaganda broadcasts along the demilitarized zone, Seoul’s military said in June after the election of South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, who is seeking to ease tensions with Pyongyang. The South Korean Ministry of National Defense on Monday last week said it had begun removing loudspeakers from its side of the border as “a practical measure aimed at helping ease
DEADLY TASTE TEST: Erin Patterson tried to kill her estranged husband three times, police said in one of the major claims not heard during her initial trial Australia’s recently convicted mushroom murderer also tried to poison her husband with bolognese pasta and chicken korma curry, according to testimony aired yesterday after a suppression order lapsed. Home cook Erin Patterson was found guilty last month of murdering her husband’s parents and elderly aunt in 2023, lacing their beef Wellington lunch with lethal death cap mushrooms. A series of potentially damning allegations about Patterson’s behavior in the lead-up to the meal were withheld from the jury to give the mother-of-two a fair trial. Supreme Court Justice Christopher Beale yesterday rejected an application to keep these allegations secret. Patterson tried to kill her
RSS