US kangaroo justice in Iraq

international | anti-war / imperialism | news report Friday August 15, 2003 15:38 by kokomero

Intervening in an inter family feud in Iraq, US troops interned an 11-year old boy for 24 days without trial.

How is it that an 11-year-old could be held for over three weeks without anyone in authority asking questions?

Hundreds of Iraqis civilians are being held in makeshift jails run by US troops - many without being charged or even questioned. And in these prisons are children whose parents have no way of locating them. Jonathan Steele reveals the grim reality of coalition justice in Baghdad

It was a warm spring evening in a Baghdad suburb when American troops stopped the car in which 11-year-old Sufian Abd al-Ghani was riding close to his home with his uncle and a neighbour. They were ordered out and told to lie face down on the road. Sufian's father heard the commotion and rushed out to find the soldiers pointing their rifles at his son and the others. Claiming the uncle had fired at them, they started beating the three captives with their rifle butts, according to the father.

The American soldiers searched the Ghanis' house, but found nothing. For three hours Sufian was kept on the ground with the two adults. Then the Americans put hoods over their heads, tied their hands with tight plastic bracelets, and drove them away.

Sufian spent eight days in a tent with around 20 adults. They were given yellow packets of ready-to-eat meals, the standard US army fare, but no change of clothes. Then the hood went back on and Sufian was taken to the Salhiyeh detention centre for women and juveniles - a holding facility in a police station just outside Saddam Hussein's Republican Palace, which has become the headquarters of the coalition authority.

A woman prisoner spotted Sufian and realised he was much younger than the other inmates. On her release she went to see the Ghanis, who had been searching frantically for their son. It was now June 17, almost three weeks after his arrest on May 28.

They brought the boy food and clean clothes, and four days later obtained an order from Mohammed Latif al-Duleimi, a US-approved investigating judge, for Sufian's immediate release. Sufian's father took it to the US military police who run the detention centre. But they told him that orders by Iraqi judges had no legal authority.

Ghani turned for help to the new US-founded police academy. He met a Captain Crusoe, who took up the case and rang a US army lawyer at the airport. The lawyer ordered the boy's release on June 21 - but still the military police refused to act.

After 24 days the boy's ordeal was over, but he regularly has nightmares. However, his case is not the worst in the four months since the Americans occupied Iraq. Several children have been shot dead, some as passengers in cars which fell foul of American checkpoints, some mistaken at night for adults.