Lord Have Mercy
Families Hunt for Iraq's "Lost"
By David Enders
The Christian Science Monitor
Monday 01 May 2006
More than 34,000 Iraqis have been jailed, but officials often do not know where.
Baghdad - At the small, crowded prisoner-tracking department of the Ministry of Human Rights (MOHR), tears often flow freely.
"He was arrested from his house on December 25," sobs Jameela Abdullah Hikmet, who was looking for her brother, Jameel Abdullah Hikmet.
With thousands of Iraqis kidnapped and arrested over the past three years, often in murky circumstances, the MOHR has become one more place Iraqis look for missing relatives. More than 34,000 Iraqis, according to MOHR figures, are held at one of the dozens of prisons across the country run by either the US military or the Iraqi Ministries of Interior, Defense, and Justice.
The system has become more organized in recent months, but prisoners are still "lost," says one Iraqi official. Ms. Hikmet says she visited morgues first, believing initially that her brother had been taken by men posing as government officials.
Hikmet says she then visited dozens of prisons before she was told by an official at the Ministry of Interior (MOI) that her brother was being held by the Wolf Brigade, one of the ministry's elite police units. She was then sent to the MOHR, which tracks prisoners in the US military and Iraqi detention systems centrally. She has been coming to the MOHR for two weeks, but they can still not confirm that it is the MOI that is holding her brother.
Continues....
By David Enders
The Christian Science Monitor
Monday 01 May 2006
More than 34,000 Iraqis have been jailed, but officials often do not know where.
Baghdad - At the small, crowded prisoner-tracking department of the Ministry of Human Rights (MOHR), tears often flow freely.
"He was arrested from his house on December 25," sobs Jameela Abdullah Hikmet, who was looking for her brother, Jameel Abdullah Hikmet.
With thousands of Iraqis kidnapped and arrested over the past three years, often in murky circumstances, the MOHR has become one more place Iraqis look for missing relatives. More than 34,000 Iraqis, according to MOHR figures, are held at one of the dozens of prisons across the country run by either the US military or the Iraqi Ministries of Interior, Defense, and Justice.
The system has become more organized in recent months, but prisoners are still "lost," says one Iraqi official. Ms. Hikmet says she visited morgues first, believing initially that her brother had been taken by men posing as government officials.
Hikmet says she then visited dozens of prisons before she was told by an official at the Ministry of Interior (MOI) that her brother was being held by the Wolf Brigade, one of the ministry's elite police units. She was then sent to the MOHR, which tracks prisoners in the US military and Iraqi detention systems centrally. She has been coming to the MOHR for two weeks, but they can still not confirm that it is the MOI that is holding her brother.
Continues....
posted by Christy at 1:10 AM
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