Detained

I took part in a surprise inspection of an Iraqi detention facility the other day. A team comprising several US military inspectors, Embassy political officers and a group of Inspectors General from several Iraqi ministries periodically drops in on known or suspected detention facilities run by Ministry of Interior or Ministry of Defense security units. Our mission involved checking in on a facility housing 652 inmates detained by a special commando police unit of the MoI. I have learned much about how to run an authoritarian regime during my time here. Not sure if I will ever have a chance to use this information in practical application, but I find it edifying nonetheless. So the best way to protect a dictatorial regime centered on a single megalomaniac is to have as many competing, non-cooperative and distrustful security units as possible. Demand extraordinary loyalty from each of them, insinuate suspicions of betrayal against all of them and arbitrarily execute both the loyal and the disloyal in roughly equal numbers to ensure an environment where those tasked to protect the regime possess a fear of that which they are protecting in equal measure to any fear of those enemies that they are protecting the regime against. The Iraqi state we are assisting is grappling with the legacy of such a security apparatus. There are a vast array of security units with overlapping and ambiguous jurisdictions, methodologies and mandates. There are police, commando police, special police, border patrol police, regular army, special forces army and units called ‘public order’ battalions. (I thought that name particularly sinister; apparently so have others - just last week they have renamed these units ‘national police’.) Our visit to the detention facility found us at the headquarters of one of these renamed ‘public order’ units; right down the hall from the police command post was a large room where the majority of the detainees was held. They opened the door and we were nearly flattened by the stale stench of incarcerated men. A couple hundred men sat cross-legged on mats in a room that both in size and construction made me think of a middle-school cafeteria, after the tables had been cleared out for indoor recess. And without all the motivational posters involving animals. We were told that these men (detainees- not ‘prisoners’; they have yet to be charged or sentenced for crimes) were arrested for a variety of possible reasons, from petty theft or traffic violations to the occasional hard-core terrorist. So here’s where we need to go into the Iraqi justice system, and then possibly discuss what it’s like to bring justice to a society struggling with terrorism, sectarian violence and an insurgency. I always dislike making comparisons to the U.S. when I discuss Iraq; I dislike the ‘they do it this way and we do it this way’ false dichotomy that emerges. But here it’s actually sort of useful. Iraqi justice is modeled on the Continental system; there are fundamental differences between this system and our tradition of common law and its relationships between police and courts. The presumption of innocence does not exist. You are arrested and detained and eventually face an ‘investigative judge’ who is responsible for both collecting the evidence against you and determining your guilt. ‘Evidence’ generally consists of two secret testimonials against you, and ‘confessions’ are the most popular form of evidence used to determine guilt. This is quite different from a D.A. trying to convince a disinterested judge that you were in fact at the scene of the crime and your fingerprints were on the weapon in question and the blood stain type found on your trousers in fact matched the victim’s, while your lawyer steadfastly claims that such circumstantial details do not make you a murderer. Even the role of the police as an institution is fundamentally different. In an authoritarian regime, the police exist not ‘to protect and serve’ the people, but to secure the regime from internal threats and prevent popular uprisings. They are seen by the population as ‘security forces’, not as agents of ‘law enforcement’. This is a legacy that complicates and frustrates efforts to build public trust and support for police forces. Of course, widespread corruption and infiltration by militia groups hasn’t helped their reputation either. But, as a process, things are moving forward. Our visit is one example. The intent is to legitimate efforts within the Iraqi government system to become more self-evaluating and create mechanisms for continual reform. By escorting Inspectors General, civil servants whose primary job is to evaluate their own ministries, into these detention facilities and helping them raise issues to their own government about standards, practices and abuses is just one way to help transform this society. We had four IG’s with us- from the MoI, the MoD, the Human Rights Commission and the Prime Minister’s office. We were hoping for about nine of them to show up for the visit, but it takes a considerable amount of personal courage to be in this line of work; having a job where you are supposed to be critical of the government’s security units (and their leaders) can be hazardous. The IG’s went into the hall and interviewed a number of detainees, asking how long they had been detained, whether they had seen a judge yet, if they had access to medical care and if there were any concerns about abuse. The guards were fairly helpful throughout the visit, although many of our questions were answered with circular statements or blatant prevarications. An hour into our visit, the commander announced the release of 40 men; it was not coincidental. They filed out into the yard, took seats in the dirt and listened to the commander as he appealed to the men to become better citizens and not be angry about their time in detention; the fact that they were being released meant that they were good men and he harbored no ill will against them. He called them all brothers and then marched them to the gate, releasing them back onto the streets of Baghdad. He offered taxi money from his pocket for any man who asked. Most didn’t spend any time lingering around once they made it through the gate. I saw no egregious abuses or evidence of mistreatment during the visit; of course I didn’t expect to barge in on any naked pyramids or water-torture interrogations. But they were dealing with significant overcrowding; the imperative to restore stability to a society reeling from terrorism and violent crime has created a surge of detainees into a justice system that is under-manned, under-resourced and unprepared to provide due process, much less a speedy trial. Later that evening, I took a very long shower and felt an overwhelming appreciation for the extraordinarily difficult choices that are made when any society finds itself struggling to find a balance between public security and private civil liberties.