WASHINGTON, 17 June 2006 — Iraq’s prisons are overrun by Shiite militias who abuse and kill inmates, and Iraqi officials have asked the United States to suspend the transfer of prisons and prisoners to Iraqi control, The Washington Post said yesterday, quoting a senior Iraqi official.
“We cannot control the prisons. It’s as simple as that,” said Deputy Justice Minister Pusho Ibrahim Ali Daza Yei, an ethnic Kurd.
“Our jails are infiltrated by the militias from top to bottom, from Basra to Baghdad,” he said, adding that of special concern were the prisons run by Iraq’s Interior Ministry that house 1,797 inmates, 90 percent of whom are Sunni Arabs. Yei said he had written to the US officer in charge of US-run prisons in Iraq asking him to suspend plans to transfer five facilities housing more than 15,000 inmates to Iraqi control, saying his ministry was “unprepared” to take them over.
US Army Maj. Gen. John D. Gardner told the daily in writing that the transfer would not take place “until each respective facility and the Iraqi corrections system have demonstrated the ability to maintain US standards of care and custody.”
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=83939&d=17&m=6&y=2006
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