US priority: managing captives in Iraq

To deal with more detentions, the US is building facilities and adding military police.

from the April 6, 2007 edition

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WASHINGTON - As the Baghdad security plan under Army Gen. David Petraeus moves forward, US and Iraqi forces are apprehending hundreds of insurgents, terrorists, and other criminals. Many of them are quickly being transferred to the Iraqis for detainment. There's just one problem: The Iraqi judicial system, which is responsible for processing such detainees, isn't yet up to the task. This is forcing the Americans to build more detention facilities to hold all the detainees – and bring in more US military police to guard them.

The Iraqi judicial system has been hobbled by the four years of war, as well as the loss of judges and lawyers who either fled the country or were murdered. As a result, the judicial system simply doesn't have the capacity to process many of the new detainees.

This is posing a key challenge as American and Iraqi forces try to bring stability to some of Iraq's most dangerous neighborhoods. Thus US forces are beefing up their facilities, and also helping the Iraqis build their own detention centers. In addition, on Monday, the Pentagon formally announced the deployment to Iraq of more than 2,000 additional US military police, who will join the roughly 3,000 MPs already there.

Defense officials see the US moves as a sign that General Petraeus is confident he'll clean up the streets – using the right amount of resources, with the aim of avoiding another detention fiasco like Abu Ghraib.

Nabbing criminals, insurgents, and others, and holding them for as long as it takes, is "very sound operational planning," says Mike Newton, a law professor at Vanderbilt University and a retired Army lieutenant colonel who has been to Iraq four times as a legal consultant.

"If you have military forces on the ground as part of a surge, that helps, but if you do that and you know there are bad guys in the neighborhood, they'll just wait you out," Mr. Newton says. "You've got to pick them up."

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