US military shutting largest prison camp in Iraq - freeing or transfering all prisoners

[HamdenRice]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/17/AR2009091700721.html

U.S. military shuts largest detainee camp in Iraq

Thursday, September 17, 2009; 5:00 AM

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The U.S. military Thursday closed down its largest detention center in Iraq as it continued to release or hand to Iraqi authorities the thousands of people it has held since the 2003 U.S. invasion.

The closure of Camp Bucca, a sprawling prison complex in Iraq's southern desert near Kuwait, was agreed to under the bilateral security pact signed last year obliging U.S. forces to wind down their massive detention program in Iraq.

Bucca once housed as many as 14,000 detainees, the majority held for months or years without any charges made against them and with no access to a lawyer. Some were kept in steel shipping containers with a toilet and air conditioning.

The number of detainees dwindled before the camp's formal closure at 3:22 a.m. (0022 GMT), when a transport plane carrying the last group of 180 detainees left Basra for another military prison in Baghdad, a U.S. military statement said.

The security pact, which also calls for all U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq by 2012, obliges the United States to release U.S. detainees who do not face Iraqi arrest warrants or detention orders. Since January, 5,703 U.S. inmates have been released and 1,360 were transferred to the Iraqi government.

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