[prisoner-rights] Iraq: First ICRC visit to detainees at newly opened facility in Baghdad

ICRC Press Release
3-10-2006

Geneva/Baghdad (ICRC) -- The International Committee of the Red Cross
(ICRC) has completed its first visit to people held under American
authority at the newly extended Camp Cropper internment facility in
Baghdad.

Of the approximately 3,550 people held there, most were recently
transferred from Abu Ghraib.

A team of 16 delegates, including a medical doctor, carried out the visit
in accordance with the ICRC's standard procedures. The delegates were
authorized to talk in private to persons of their choice, to visit all the
premises and to discuss detention-related issues with the authorities. The
detainees were given the opportunity to write messages to their families.

Assessing the conditions of detention of people deprived of their liberty
remains a priority for the ICRC in Iraq despite the constraints imposed by
the difficult security situation. Since April 2003, the ICRC has been
regularly visiting those held in permanent internment facilities under
American and British authority and in more than 20 places of detention
under the regional Kurdish authority.

Since the beginning of this year, over 50 visits have been carried out to
various places of detention and an average of 6,000 Red Cross messages
(brief personal messages) between detainees and their families have been
forwarded each month. Since October 2005, the ICRC has paid for more than
15,500 trips by individuals visiting relatives held at Camp Bucca, near
Basra.

For further information, please contact: 
Nada Doumani, ICRC Baghdad, tel: +962 777 399 614 
Dorothea Krimitsas, ICRC Geneva, tel: +41 22 730 2590 or +41 79 2519318