Thursday, March 29, 2007

 

Overcrowding in Iraqi prisons worse since security operation

Humanitarian
(AP) - An Iraqi monitoring group said Wednesday that detention centers have become severely overcrowded since a security crackdown began six weeks ago in Baghdad and most of the inmates were being held without evidence. Maan Zeki Khadum, the deputy head of the governmental legal oversight group, said one facility on the western edge of Baghdad held 272 inmates although it was designed for 75, while another lockup south of the capital, with room for 75, reportedly held nearly 800 prisoners.
He said his team of 17 lawyers visited the detention center at the Iraqi-run Muthanna Air Base on the western outskirts of Baghdad on March 13 and found the prisoners in poor conditions, with five people crammed into a cell built for one.
Khadum's group reports to Shiite politician Ahmed Chalabi, head of a committee responsible for building public support for the neighborhood-by-neighborhood sweep to end sectarian violence in Baghdad. Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, a spokesman for the security plan, could not immediately be reached for comment. But an Interior Ministry spokesman denied there was overcrowding and said the prison conditions had met human rights requirements.
The lawyers also visited a detention center in a predominantly Shiite neighborhood in northern Baghdad, which he said had more than 1,000 inmates and was in even worse condition than the facility at the air base. He also said the team had reports that nearly 800 prisoners were being housed in a detention center with a capacity for 75 in the Sunni city of Mahmoudiyah, south of Baghdad, although the lawyers had not yet visited that facility, which is in a volatile area that suffers frequent insurgent attacks.

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