Militias Hold Sway In Prisons, Iraqi Says (US retains control)

BAGHDAD -- Iraq's prison system is overrun with Shiite Muslim militiamen who have freed fellow militia members convicted of major crimes and executed Sunni Arab inmates, the country's deputy justice minister said in an interview this week.

"We cannot control the prisons. It's as simple as that," said the deputy minister, Pusho Ibrahim Ali Daza Yei, an ethnic Kurd. "Our jails are infiltrated by the militias from top to bottom, from Basra to Baghdad."

As a result, Yei has asked U.S. authorities to suspend plans to transfer prisons and detainees from American to Iraqi control. "Our ministry is unprepared at this time to take over the facilities, especially those in areas where Shiite militias exist," he said in a letter to U.S. Army Maj. Gen. John D. Gardner, the official in charge of American detention facilities.

U.S. officials said months ago that they planned to turn over Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison and three other American-run facilities to the Iraqi government, but the handoff has been repeatedly pushed back. Gardner has said he will not authorize the transfers until he is convinced that standards of inmate treatment and security match those maintained in U.S.-run facilities.

"We will not transfer the facilities and legal custody of the detainees until each respective facility and the Iraqi Corrections system have demonstrated the ability to maintain the required standards, especially in the areas of care and custody," Gardner said in a written response to questions. "We fully recognize that there are significant challenges that must be overcome but believe that we will be able to address these as we move through 2006 into 2007."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/15/AR2006061502180.html

:sarcasm:

I thought the story was going to be about "militias IN prison" as in "militialike men who are incarcerated".
Looks like there is going to have to be several prisons now:
One for Sunnis (Kurds and Shiia not in control)
One for Kurds (actually the Kurdistan Prov. Authority is functioning quite nicely, and they have job postings out now for a new English language university to shortly open near Mosul)
One for Shia (Only Kurds and Shia can run it..)
One for Christians (Who can run that system? Well, in the US, Xians are very good at prison-running, so I guess they can run their own...)
Secular Baathists (are there any left? or have they all declared their religion as their politics these days?)
What an amazing clusterfuck! You can't even keep the rapists and murderers (common garden variety, not the "insurgent" or "militia" type) in jail!

:kick:

week that everything was just coming up roses in Iraq.

"We cannot control the prisons. It's as simple as that,"

"the ability to maintain" US standards of care and custody"- rampant murder and torture are the orders of the day right now!

things are looking up according to the media

our troops doing it? I forgot, Lindy england was an aberration.

I see where this is going.