Posted on 05/06/2004 12:29:41 PM PDT by quidnunc
Nearly all 8,080 prisoners being held by U.S. authorities in Iraq are considered security threats: insurgents linked to attacks on coalition forces, and terrorists and former officials of Saddam Hussein's regime suspected of having useful intelligence, military officials say.
"The goal is to gain intelligence," said a coalition spokesman in Iraq. "Under the rules of the Geneva Convention, those in detention can be exploited for intelligence."
Additionally, the U.S. Army has a small number of Iraqi criminals in custody, a couple hundred arrested for breaking local laws. Up to 7,000 criminals, who until March were kept with security detainees, already have been turned over to the new Iraqi government ministry.
"Security detainees are those who are considered an imperative threat to security," said the spokesman, who spoke on condition he not be identified by name. "These are people who have been identified through means such as intelligence and reconnaissance as being a threat to coalition forces or Iraqis, or people living and working in Iraq legally."
The approximately 7,800 security detainees make up about 95 percent of the prison population, and are the category of prisoners photographed nude and being abused at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, where about 4,000 prisoners are being held, U.S. officials said.
"These are people who have been captured as a consequence of anticoalition or anti-Iraqi activity," the coalition spokesman said.
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(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
You are absolutely right.
How asinine was that?
Apparently someone has found about 1000 more photos somewhere in the Internet.
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