External links
- Human Rights First; Command’s Responsibility: Detainee Deaths in U.S. Custody in Iraq and Afghanistan
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As of December 2007 there are some 50,000 detainees in Iraq, many of them untried and not accused of any crime. Iraqi authorities hold 24,000 detainees and the United States 26,000. Critics say only a small proportion of those held are ever prosecuted.
Sunni Arab leaders have repeatedly called for the release of detainees in American custody, most of whom are Sunni Arabs held as suspected insurgents.
There has been a sharp increase in detentions since the United States 'surge' of mid-2007. Many prisoners are held without formal charges, and their fate is one of many sensitive issues believed to be complicating efforts to promote national reconciliation.
The Iraqi cabinet approved a draft law on December 26 that will offer a general pardon to thousands of prisoners in US military and Iraqi custody, a government spokesman said. "The cabinet has passed the general pardon law, which will define who is eligible to be freed from all prisons, both Iraqi and American," spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told Reuters.
A draft law approved by the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki aims to identify prisoners who would be eligible for release under a general pardon. The law would have to be approved by Iraq's parliament to go into effect.
Iraq's national security adviser, Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, said that the draft law was aimed at boosting reconciliation between majority Shi'ite and Sunni Arab Muslims.
The US military has said it intends to free most of its detainees by the end of 2008.
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Abu Zubaydah is a Saudi Arabian citizen currently held by the U.S. in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. He is held under the authority of Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF).
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Abu Ghraib prison was a prison complex in Abu Ghraib, Iraq, located 32 kilometers (20 mi) west of Baghdad. Abu Ghraib prison was opened in the 1950s and served as a maximum-security prison with torture, weekly executions, and squalid living conditions. From the 1980s the prison was used by the United States and Saddam Hussein to hold political prisoners, developing a reputation for torture and extrajudicial killing, and was closed in 2002.
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Jamal Udeen Al-Harith, born Ronald Fiddler, also known as Abu-Zakariya al-Britani, was a British citizen who reportedly died carrying out a suicide bombing in Iraq in February 2017.
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A parliamentary election was held in Iraq on 7 March 2010. The election decided the 325 members of the Council of Representatives of Iraq who would elect the Iraqi prime minister and president. The election resulted in a partial victory for the Iraqi National Movement, led by former Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, which won a total of 91 seats, making it the largest alliance in the Council. The State of Law Coalition, led by incumbent Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, was the second largest grouping with 89 seats.
The U.S.–Iraq Status of Forces Agreement was a status of forces agreement (SOFA) between Iraq and the United States, signed by President George W. Bush in 2008. It established that U.S. combat forces would withdraw from Iraqi cities by June 30, 2009, and all U.S. combat forces will be completely out of Iraq by December 31, 2011. The pact required criminal charges for holding prisoners over 24 hours, and required a warrant for searches of homes and buildings that were not related to combat. U.S. contractors working for U.S. forces would have been subject to Iraqi criminal law, while contractors working for the State Department and other U.S. agencies would retain their immunity. If U.S. forces committed still undecided "major premeditated felonies" while off-duty and off-base, they would have been subjected to an undecided procedures laid out by a joint U.S.-Iraq committee if the U.S. certified the forces were off-duty.
The Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced the holding of a consultative grand council called the Afghanistan's National Consultative Peace Jirga (NCPJ) or shortly Peace Jirga in his inauguration speech on 19 November 2009, after winning elections for a second term, to end the ongoing Taliban insurgency. At the International Afghanistan Conference in London on 28 January 2010, he announced that the government would hold the event in April or May 2010, intended to bring together tribal elders, officials and local power brokers from around the country, to discuss peace and the end of the insurgency. "Jirga" is a word in the Pashto language that means "large assembly" or "council". It is a traditional method in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan of resolving disputes between tribes or discussing problems affecting whole communities.
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The Islamic State of Iraq was a militant Salafist jihadist group that aimed to establish an Islamic state in Sunni, Arab-majority areas of Iraq during the Iraq War and later in Syria during the Syrian Civil War.