U.S. War Prisons Legal Vacuum for 14,000

A detainee in an outdoor solitary confinement cell talks with a military policeman at the Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad, Iraq in this June 22, 2004 file photo. When the Americans formally turned over Abu Ghraib prison to Iraqi control on Sept. 2,2006 it was empty but its 3,000 prisoners remained in U.S. custody, shifted to Camp Cropper. (AP Photo/John Moore, File) (John Moore - AP)

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan declared last March that the extent of arbitrary detention here is "not consistent with provisions of international law governing internment on imperative reasons of security."

Meanwhile, officials of Nouri al-Maliki's 4-month-old Iraqi government say the U.S. detention system violates Iraq's national rights.

"As long as sovereignty has transferred to Iraqi hands, the Americans have no right to detain any Iraqi person," said Fadhil al-Sharaa, an aide to the prime minister. "The detention should be conducted only with the permission of the Iraqi judiciary."

At the Justice Ministry, Deputy Minister Busho Ibrahim told AP it has been "a daily request" that the detainees be brought under Iraqi authority.

There's no guarantee the Americans' 13,000 detainees would fare better under control of the Iraqi government, which U.N. officials say holds 15,000 prisoners.

But little has changed because of these requests. When the Americans formally turned over Abu Ghraib prison to Iraqi control on Sept. 2, it was empty but its 3,000 prisoners remained in U.S. custody, shifted to Camp Cropper.

Life in Custody

The cases of U.S.-detained Iraqis are reviewed by a committee of U.S. military and Iraqi government officials. The panel recommends criminal charges against some, release for others. As of Sept. 9, the Central Criminal Court of Iraq had put 1,445 on trial, convicting 1,252. In the last week of August, for example, 38 were sentenced on charges ranging from illegal weapons possession to murder, for the shooting of a U.S. Marine.

Almost 18,700 have been released since June 2004, the U.S. command says, not including many more who were held and then freed by local military units and never shipped to major prisons.

Some who were released, no longer considered a threat, later joined or rejoined the insurgency.

The review process is too slow, say U.N. officials. Until they are released, often families don't know where their men are _ the prisoners are usually men _ or even whether they're in American hands.

Ex-detainee Mouayad Yasin Hassan, 31, seized in April 2004 as a suspected Sunni Muslim insurgent, said he wasn't allowed to obtain a lawyer or contact his family during 13 months at Abu Ghraib and Bucca, where he was interrogated incessantly. When he asked why he was in prison, he said, the answer was, "We keep you for security reasons."