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.
LANDMARK CASE: ‘Every night we were dragged to US soldiers and sexually abused. Every week we were forced to undergo venereal disease tests,’ a victim said More than 100 South Korean women who were forced to work as prostitutes for US soldiers stationed in the country have filed a landmark lawsuit accusing Washington of abuse, their lawyers said yesterday. Historians and activists say tens of thousands of South Korean women worked for state-sanctioned brothels from the 1950s to 1980s, serving US troops stationed in country to protect the South from North Korea. In 2022, South Korea’s top court ruled that the government had illegally “established, managed and operated” such brothels for the US military, ordering it to pay about 120 plaintiffs compensation. Last week, 117 victims
China on Monday announced its first ever sanctions against an individual Japanese lawmaker, targeting China-born Hei Seki for “spreading fallacies” on issues such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and disputed islands, prompting a protest from Tokyo. Beijing has an ongoing spat with Tokyo over islands in the East China Sea claimed by both countries, and considers foreign criticism on sensitive political topics to be acts of interference. Seki, a naturalised Japanese citizen, “spread false information, colluded with Japanese anti-China forces, and wantonly attacked and smeared China”, foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian told reporters on Monday. “For his own selfish interests, (Seki)
Argentine President Javier Milei on Sunday vowed to “accelerate” his libertarian reforms after a crushing defeat in Buenos Aires provincial elections. The 54-year-old economist has slashed public spending, dismissed tens of thousands of public employees and led a major deregulation drive since taking office in December 2023. He acknowledged his party’s “clear defeat” by the center-left Peronist movement in the elections to the legislature of Buenos Aires province, the country’s economic powerhouse. A deflated-sounding Milei admitted to unspecified “mistakes” which he vowed to “correct,” but said he would not be swayed “one millimeter” from his reform agenda. “We will deepen and accelerate it,” he
‘HYANGDO’: A South Korean lawmaker said there was no credible evidence to support rumors that Kim Jong-un has a son with a disability or who is studying abroad South Korea’s spy agency yesterday said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s daughter, Kim Ju-ae, who last week accompanied him on a high-profile visit to Beijing, is understood to be his recognized successor. The teenager drew global attention when she made her first official overseas trip with her father, as he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Analysts have long seen her as Kim’s likely successor, although some have suggested she has an older brother who is being secretly groomed as the next leader. The South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) “assesses that she [Kim Ju-ae]
RSS