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In Iraq, 'a Prison Full of Innocent Men'
'Who Is Going to Paradise?'
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The sweeping changes in detention operations are clearly visible at Camp Bucca, a two-square-mile facility in the desert with so many prisoners that U.S. officials have said it would be the 63rd-largest city in Iraq. At night, its floodlights are so bright that soldiers say it looks like Las Vegas.
U.S. officials allowed The Post to visit Bucca and Camp Cropper, a facility near the Baghdad airport, but not to speak directly with the detainees because they said doing so would violate the Geneva Conventions. Some detainees, however, agreed to answer questions relayed through military officials.
The most visible symbols of the new strategy are the ubiquitous Bucca Bears created by the detainees. The first one was fashioned by Haider, a farmer from Najaf who has been at Bucca for three years, out of yellow sheets and the stuffing from his mattress. Markers were used to draw crude features. "When they found the bear with me they confiscated it, and I was afraid I was in trouble," he said.
But instead of punishing Haider, U.S. officials decided to create an arts-and-crafts program and produce the Bucca Bears on a wider scale to be distributed to children visiting the detainees.
As Haider fashioned his stuffed animals, an imam at a nearby compound preached a moderate version of Islam and a former politician taught a civics class, part of the detention system's focus on engaging moderates.
As 20 detainees gathered around Sheik Abdul Sattar Abdul Jibar on prayer mats, he told them to avoid sectarian violence and peer pressure. "Who is going to paradise?" asked Jibar, 45, a Baghdad preacher. "The Shia guy says the Shia. The Sunni says the Sunni. This is wrong. People are judged by God, based on their own behavior."
Not all the detainees, of course, are moderates taking part in the programs. The most dangerous Sunni extremists are housed at Compound 30, known as the Rock. The prisoners hurl urine, feces and tennis-ball-size clumps of dirt and tea at U.S. troops. "Everyone's always on edge here," said 2nd Lt. Kyle Graves, the compound chief.
Things are different for Petty Officer 1st Class Joseph Sabia, assigned to work with detainees in the camp's carpentry program. Carpentry tools that could be used as deadly weapons -- bow saws, handsaws, screwdrivers and various power tools -- were freely available to the loosely supervised detainees to use.
"There is a high level of trust," Sabia said. "We've had no problems with any of the detainees."
Guilt Isn't Easy to Determine
The U.S. military held about 300 juveniles this summer at Camp Cropper who were also reviewed by the military panels. Wearing beige sandals, purple pants and a white shirt with a heart drawn on in marker, 16-year-old Eyad Hamzah Saleh was called into a hearing room one day in May.
The head of the board, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Chuck Le Moyne, began by reading a legalistic statement referring to Article 78 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and the U.N. Security Council.
"You are not serving a sentence," Le Moyne said. "You have been held because you have been determined to be a security threat. This committee will determine if you remain an imperative threat to the security of the multinational forces, the Iraqi people or the Iraqi government."
