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US urged to end the legal limbo of its Iraqi prisoners

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

London, Aug 9, IRNA
US-Iraq Prisoners
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is calling for an end to the legal vacuum surrounding the detention of nearly 21,000 Iraqi prisoners, including some 360 children, by US military forces.

"The detainees - all Iraqis, save for a small number of foreigners - are denied their basic right not to be held indefinitely without charge or trial. Many are young men rounded up in mass, arbitrary arrests," said HRW's Iraq researcher Joseph Logan.

Even though international law does allow for administrative detention, Logan said the United States has "not even met the basic requirements for holding people under such circumstances." "The cases are reviewed by military panels, with no meaningful access to legal counsel and no judicial review - both of which detainees are entitled to under international law," he said.

The US-led Multinational Force-Iraq (MNF) has claimed the authority to hold the detainees under successive UN Security Council Resolutions, the last of which expires at the end of the year.

Unlike the US, Britain has all but ended its role as a jailer in Iraq, claiming that UK forces now only hold two detainees in the country.

In an article for the New Statesman magazine, Logan suggested that all parties in the debate for bilateral agreements to replace the final UN resolution should "back up their rhetoric about Iraqi sovereignty by ending the legal vacuum" surrounding the detainees.

"A step in that direction would be a US-Iraqi agreement to bring the status of these detainees in line with international human rights law and the laws of war for conflicts like the one in Iraq," he said.

The researcher said the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Iraq has ratified, requires among other things that detainees face a judge promptly, and have prompt access to legal counsel and family members.

"Such a commitment should encourage the Iraqi authorities to improve their own poor record on detention and abuse of detainees," he also argued.

Logan said the US should also "release at once detainees unlikely to be charged, and transfer others against whom there is evidence for criminal proceedings to Iraqi courts - with the safeguard that no one should be transferred there if they are at risk of abuse." While the two US presidential candidates were jockeying to claim victory for their Iraq plans, he suggested both should commit to "ending the legal limbo of detention in Iraq, by upholding international legal standards in Iraq and restoring justice to the thousands wrongly held."

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