BBC: Iraqi jails overcrowded; Government officials seek vote to pass Iraq’s security pact
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    • The BBC reported that there was evidence of serious overcrowding and poor living conditions in one of Iraq's prisons - Baghdad's Rusafa facility, where about 150 prisoners were being held in a room about the size of a school classroom. The report noted that Iraq’s judicial system was too overloaded to cope with the increase in the number of prisoners. It was the first time that foreign media personnel had access to an Iraqi jail since the US-led invasion in 2003. One of the inmates told the programme that conditions inside the complex were ‘terrible’, and that they were hardly ever let out because there was no proper exercise area.

    The interior ministry officials, though admitting they had a problem, blamed the security situation in the country which led to the arrest of thousands of people over the past few years, including suspected insurgents accused of serious crimes. However, even after these many years, the arrested people were still yet to be charged. The report noted that conditions in jails like Rusafa could get even worse when more prisoners are transferred from the US to Iraqi control1.

    In other developments, intensive negotiations were under way to gather votes in the Iraqi Parliament for a security and strategic framework agreement that, if approved, would lay the road map for the complete withdrawal of American troops from Iraq in three years. Parliamentary approval is being seen as critical to ending the unpopular war. The pact being discussed grants greater oversight powers to the Iraqis for American military maneuvers. It also has an array of restrictions on American operations to ensure that the Iraqi government has real control over troop activities, in addition to a timeline for the withdrawal of foreign troops in the country. Despite these many restraints on American operations however, Iraqi lawmakers still expressed uneasiness with the pact2.

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