Monday, October 8, 2007

Iraqi Justice

A new dispatch from Bill Ardolino:
"The next step in the criminal justice system is broken; the judicial system is compromised,” said former PiTT Commander Major Brian Lippo in January. “You've got judges here who are afraid to take criminal cases because of threats to their lives. You don't even have a local prison to hold them; if (the Iraqi Police) wanted to make more arrests, they have nowhere to hold these guys.”

“They were doing mass roll-ups,” said current PiTT Commander Major Anthony Sermarini. “Even in 2004, they were saying there might have been 2,000 insurgents in the city. That’s certainly not the case even at the beginning of this year, things weren’t that good, no, but there was not a brigade of insurgents running around. They started doing mass roll-ups, and a minute percentage of the people they were rolling up might have been bad guys. So what they were doing was flooding a system that, first of all, was stopped. Now the problem was, at least as far back as maybe last summer: for a good three to four months before I got here, there were no judges working at all, so the judicial process stopped at the jail.”

As usual, on-the-ground private reporters are telling the stories the NYT won't tell you. If you appreciate their work, put your money where your mouth is.

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