Iraq says militiamen in control of prisons

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraq's prison system is overrun with Shiite Muslim militiamen who have freed fellow militia members convicted of major crimes and executed Sunni Arab inmates, the country's deputy justice minister said in an interview this week.

"We cannot control the prisons. It's as simple as that," said the deputy minister, Pusho Ibrahim Ali Daza Yei, an ethnic Kurd. "Our jails are infiltrated by the militias from top to bottom, from Basra to Baghdad."

As a result, Yei has asked U.S. authorities to suspend plans to transfer prisons and detainees from American to Iraqi control. "Our ministry is unprepared at this time to take over the facilities, especially those in areas where Shiite militias exist," he said in a letter to U.S. Army Maj. Gen. John Gardner, the official in charge of U.S. detention facilities.

U.S. officials said months ago that they planned to turn over Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison and three other U.S.-run facilities to the Iraqi government, but the handoff has been repeatedly pushed back. Gardner has said he will not authorize the transfers until he is convinced that standards of inmate treatment and security match those maintained in U.S.-run facilities.

He said Abu Ghraib would be transferred to Iraqi control "in the next few months."

Gardner said the eventual transfer of prisons to Iraqi control would proceed gradually, preceded by several weeks of training for Iraqi guards, conducted by U.S. corrections officers and military police. The Iraqis would then work under the supervision of American guards for at least six months. A U.S. transition team would then be left in place for an additional period before the prison was handed over.

While allegations of abuse at U.S.-run prisons have waned since the 2004 Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal, Iraqi facilities have drawn increased scrutiny since a U.S. Army raid exposed torture of dozens of detainees — most of them Sunnis — at a secret Interior Ministry facility in the Baghdad neighborhood of Jadriyah.

The prison was widely alleged to have been operated by a special police unit staffed largely by members of the Badr Organization, a Shiite militia with ties to Iraq's largest Shiite political party. The government investigated the facility but never announced the results.

Yei said that because of mounting concern over detention centers run by Iraq's Interior and Defense ministries, where militias retain heavy influence, the police and army have agreed to turn over all their prisoners to the Justice Ministry by the end of the month.

As of early this month, there were 7,426 housed in Justice Ministry facilities, Yei said. The Interior Ministry has an additional 1,797 prisoners and the Defense Ministry a smaller number. More than 15,000 inmates were being held in five U.S. prisons in Iraq.

A U.N. human-rights report issued last month stressed that the Defense and Interior ministries only have legal authority to hold inmates a brief time, but Sunni Arabs charge that Sunnis are regularly imprisoned in the centers for months or even more than a year.

Meanwhile, a document purportedly captured in an al-Qaida hide-out portrays the insurgency in Iraq as being in "bleak" shape, saying that it is losing strength and proposing ways to stir up trouble between the U.S. and Iran to divert American attention.

U.S. and Iraqi forces have killed 104 insurgents in 452 raids nationwide since al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed last week, the U.S. military said.

Arrests, weapons seizures and money shortages are taking a heavy toll on al-Qaida's insurgency in Iraq, according to the three-page transcript released Thursday by the Iraqi government, which said it reflects al-Qaida policy and the terror organization's cooperation with groups loyal to Saddam Hussein.

There was no way to confirm the authenticity of the information attributed to al-Qaida, and U.S. and Iraqi officials offered conflicting accounts of when and where it was seized.

Other developments

24 killed: Despite a fresh security crackdown in Baghdad, violence erupted in the capital Thursday and at least 24 killings were reported throughout the country. A bomb in a parked car detonated in Baghdad, killing at least three civilians and wounding 14. In an even deadlier attack, gunmen shot and killed 10 men riding a bus in Baqouba.

Al-Zarqawi replacement: The U.S. military said Abu Ayyub al-Masri, an Egyptian with ties to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network, has taken over from al-Zarqawi as head of al-Qaida in Iraq. Al-Masri apparently is the man that the terrorist group identified in a Web posting last week as its new leader — Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, a nom de guerre, said U.S. Maj. Gen. William Caldwell.

Detainees freed: At Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, 489 detainees walked out of the chain-link pen at Iraq's most infamous prison. The mass release, part of a larger plan to free 2,500 prisoners this month, is intended to bolster Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's efforts to defuse the Sunni Arab insurgency. This week al-Maliki, a member of the Shiite Muslim majority, expressed a willingness to talk with insurgents and proposed pardoning people involved in the resistance that has destabilized Iraq.

Aide resigns: Al-Maliki's office Thursday accepted the resignation of an aide who had told a reporter that al-Maliki was considering a limited amnesty that would likely include guerrillas who had attacked U.S. troops, the aide said. The aide, Adnan Ali al-Kadhimi, stood by his account, and said al-Maliki himself had indicated the same position less directly in public.

Information from The Associated Press is included in this report.