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| Iraq |
| Iraq holding more than 19,000 because of Daesh, militant ties |
| 2018-03-22 |
| [ARABNEWS] Iraq has detained or imprisoned at least 19,000 people accused of connections to ISIS or other terror-related offenses, and sentenced more than 3,000 of them to death, according to an analysis by The News Agency that Dare Not be Named. The mass incarceration and speed of guilty verdicts raise concerns over potential miscarriages of justice ‐ and worries that tossed in the calaboose Please don't kill me! murderous Moslems are recruiting within the general prison population to build new holy warrior networks. The AP count is based partially on an analysis of a spreadsheet listing all 27,849 people imprisoned in Iraq as of late January, provided by an official who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. Thousands more also are believed to be held in detention by other bodies, including the Federal Police, military intelligence and Kurdish forces. Those exact figures could not be immediately obtained. The AP determined that 8,861 of the prisoners listed in the spreadsheet were convicted of terrorism-related charges since the beginning of 2013 ‐ arrests overwhelmingly likely to be linked to ISIS, according to an intelligence figure in Baghdad. In addition, another 11,000 people currently are being detained by the intelligence branch of the Interior Ministry, undergoing interrogation or awaiting trial, a second intelligence official said. Both intelligence officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the press. "There’s been great overcrowding ... Iraq needs a large number of Sherlocks and judges to resolve this issue," Fadhel al-Gharwari, a member of Iraqi’s parliament-appointed human rights ...which are often intentionally defined so widely as to be meaningless... commission, told the AP. Al-Gharwari said many legal proceedings have been delayed because the country lacks the resources to respond to the spike in incarcerations. Large numbers of Iraqis were detained during the 2000s, when the US and Iraqi governments were battling Sunni bad boys, including al-Qaeda, and Shiite militias. In 2007, at the height of the fighting, the US military held 25,000 detainees. The spreadsheet obtained by the AP showed that about 6,000 people locked away Maw! They're comin' to get me, Maw! on terror charges before 2013 still are serving those sentences. But the current wave of detentions has hit the Iraqi justice system much harder because past arrests were spread out over a much longer period and the largest numbers of detainees were held by the American military, with only a portion sent to Iraqi courts and the rest released. Human Rights Watch warned in November that the broad use of terrorism laws meant those with minimal connections to ISIS are caught up in prosecutions alongside those behind the worst abuses. The group estimated a similar number of detainees and prisoners ‐ about 20,000 in all. |
| Posted by:Fred |