Report: Iraqis Detained Without Justification
by TChris
It's no secret that the U.S. has been imprisoning people in Iraq without adequate cause to justify the detentions. The sudden drive to release prisoners after the embarrassment of Abu Ghraib demonstrates that many detainees should never have been taken into custody, or should have been released promptly.
Maj. Gen. John Ryder recognized that problem last fall, when he completed a report concluding that hundreds of Iraqi prisoners were being held in Abu Ghraib "despite a lack of evidence that they posed a security threat to American forces."
The unpublished report ... reflects what other senior Army officers have described as a deep concern among some American officers and officials in Iraq over the refusal of top American commanders in Baghdad to authorize the release of so-called security prisoners.
General Ryder, the Army's provost marshal, reported that some Iraqis had been held for several months for nothing more than expressing "displeasure or ill will" toward the American occupying forces. The Nov. 5 report said the process for deciding which arrested Iraqis posed security risks justifying imprisonment, and for deciding when to release them, violated the Pentagon's own policies. It also said the conditions in which they were held sometimes violated the Geneva Conventions.
Ryder gave his report to Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the top American commander in Iraq, but Sanchez apparently deferred to the desire of other officers to ignore international law by keeping the prisoners locked up.
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