Iraqis languish in crowded jails

BAGHDAD — Just five minutes.

That's what Iraqi soldiers said they needed when they took Ahmed-Hussein Juma in for questioning in February 2007.

"And now here we are, 1 1/2 years later," Juma said with a hopeless laugh last month as he stood in a holding cage, metal handcuffs on his wrists and a prison number stitched crookedly on his green jumpsuit.

Dozens of other men sat on benches at Baghdad's Rusafa detention center, all waiting to visit a new U.S.-funded legal aid clinic that American officials hope will help clear the backlog of detainees lost in Iraq's severely overloaded prison system.

In its bid to get the men fair trials or release, the clinic faces immense obstacles, not the least of which is a case file system that consists of paperwork tied together with bits of string. But even more worrying are the sectarian overtones: Most of the detainees are Sunni Arabs accused of terrorism-related offenses, and many claim to be targets of the Shiite Muslim-dominated security forces who they say used trumped-up charges to achieve sectarian "cleansing."

As the Bush administration touts security gains, the issue of the detainees raises questions about the Iraqi government's commitment to human rights, and undermines Sunni trust in the Shiite-led government -- a disenchantment that could even send some Iraqis into the arms of the waning insurgency.

"Unsurprisingly, someone who's been deprived of their liberties for months and years without even a hint of due process . . . of course they're going to be angry," said Joseph Logan of Human Rights Watch, who recently spent time in the country researching the Iraqi justice system. "As the Americans found in 2003, the enemies you create are going to be there down the road. I think there is definitely political impact down the road from this."

A concern for the Iraqi lawyers working at the clinic is whether the Shiite-led government will foot the bill when U.S. funding runs dry.

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Odd concept for Iraqis

Kareem Swadi Lami, a former police officer and longtime attorney who heads the clinic and oversees its 25 Iraqi lawyers, acknowledges that most Iraqis would find it "very odd" that anyone was offering free legal assistance to Sunnis accused of terrorism. "If the Americans stop providing the money, I don't think the Iraqi government will sponsor us," he said.