Just What Iraq Needs: More Prisons
by Aaron Glantz

Two years after the first disgusting images from Abu Ghraib came to light, the United States military holds more than 14,000 people behind bars (this is in addition to those in Iraqi-run prisons). These prisoners are never given any kind of definite sentence and never get an open trial.

And so the prisons become a breeding ground for the insurgency.

According to John Pace, the recently resigned United Nation's Chief for Human Rights in Iraq, 80-90 percent of those incarcerated are innocent. "These people are innocent," he told Pacifica's Democracy Now! program, "and when they are rounded up, by the time that they leave, quite a number of them are no longer as innocent as they were when they entered. Because obviously they are exposed to hardcore people who have a certain degree of violent instinct in them."

In addition, being wrongly imprisoned can leave a bad taste in your mouth – especially if when you're released you find that all the money for reconstruction is being diverted to prisons, while you have no job, no electricity, and no clean water.



Full story here.