Iraqi detainees refusing to go home: US general

[Barrett808]

Source: AFP

BAGHDAD (AFP) - An increasing number of Iraqi detainees are refusing to leave detention centres despite being eligible for release because they want to complete studies begun behind bars, a US general said on Sunday.

"In the last three or four months we have begun seeing detainees asking to stay in detention, usually to complete their studies," Major General Douglas Stone told a news conference in Baghdad.

The US military offers a wide range of educational programmes to the 23,000 or so detainees -- adults and juveniles -- being held at its two detention facilities, Camp Cropper near Baghdad's international airport and Camp Bucca near the southern port city of Basra.

Some parents of juvenile detainees, too, have asked that their children remain behind bars so they can continue their schooling, said Stone, the commanding general for US detainee operations in Iraq.

The US military, he added, was not encouraging the trend.

"We don't want them to remain in detention," he said. "When they are no longer considered a threat we want them to go home."

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080323/pl_afp/iraqunrestdetainees

[noamnety]

1. Look at the happy prisoners playing table tennis!

I am so impressed by that that I'm not even going to notice the implication that children can't attend school outside of prison.

Maybe we can rescue another dog now.

[acmavm]

2. Sounds like this fool is channeling Barbara Bush

[acmavm]

3. My second dupe of the day. And both times I was told my first

post was unsuccessful. So it goes some times.

[ohio2007]

4. stop feeding them and conscript them into the Iraqi army......they'll go home.... nt

[Solly Mack]

5. the "House of Wisdom"...that's what Stone calls the "school" at Cropper

a while back when the "school" was first reported, it was said the classes would be to teach "civics" and a "moderate" form of Islam so as to not create insurgents. You know, in case the kids got angry from being detained for no reason.

Because no one wants to discuss why these kids were detained in the first place.