Word: bucca
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Meanwhile, because of the new U.S-Iraq security agreement that went into effect on Jan. 1, a first batch of 1,500 inmates were released from Camp Bucca last month, at a rate of about 50 a day. The marked improvement in security across Iraq has meant that more detainees are being released than captured. Last year, 18,600 low-threat inmates were freed from Bucca, while only half of that figure were taken in. Of those released, 497 were transferred to the Iraqi government...
Still, that's not good enough for some Iraqis, especially Sunnis worried about their co-religionists, who make up 80% of Bucca's detainee population. The Tawafuk Front, the largest Sunni parliamentary bloc with 44 of the legislature's 275 seats, says it doesn't trust the Shi'ite-led government and wants all of the detainees immediately released, even "the minority" they acknowledge might be al-Qaeda members. "Even if you released an al-Qaeda emir [leader], he won't be able to wreak havoc in the same way he did three years ago," says Omar Almashhadani, a spokesman...
...good news is that the ghost of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal seems to have been laid to rest. The bad news is that detainee families from across the sectarian spectrum don't trust their government. Salam Baten al-Attiya, 30, a Shi'ite from Sadr City, was at Bucca last week to visit his brother Ali, who was picked up by U.S troops on suspicion of being a member of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. "My brother has been here for a year and a month; keep him here for another year and a month...
...well as a backlog of judicial cases and questions as to how free and fair the judicial process is. Overcrowding is a pressing concern. The Iraqi prison system is operating at 103% capacity, Quantock says, and as a result, more than 500 convicted criminals are being held at Bucca on behalf of the Iraqi Ministry of Justice until space opens up. Says a senior Iraqi Ministry of Justice official who requested anonymity: "We have a lot of pressure on us, from political parties, human rights groups and detainee families, to get through the cases as soon as possible...
Commanders at Bucca say they'll only hand over detainees to the nine Iraqi facilities that are regularly inspected by the U.S Justice Department and meet basic humanitarian conditions. They're also building a new prison in Taji, north of Baghdad, with 5,600 beds. The plan is to continue to release most of the Bucca detainees and transition the high-threat inmates over to Taji, train Iraqi staff there and then turn the entire facility over to the Iraqi corrections system. Bucca is expected to be closed by July, and the U.S wants to be out of the detention...