By Alexander Bolton
November 15, 2007
The president of the Iraqi bar association hand-delivered a letter to House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and Senate Judiciary Committee ranking Republican Arlen Specter (Pa.) Wednesday calling for better treatment of detainees in Iraq and criticizing the U.S. government for not doing enough to build Iraq’s legal system.
Aswad al-Minshidi and a group of prominent Iraqi lawyers have sent the same letter to President Bush. On Tuesday, they shared their concerns in a private meeting with Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. They also met with Emmet Flood, special counsel to the president.
The lawyers are primarily concerned about the length of time — ranging from three months to two years — Iraqis rounded up in broad security sweeps must wait behind bars before seeing authorities with power to adjudicate their cases, said a State Department source familiar with their views. Most of the suspects rounded up on suspicion of having ties to insurgents are let go, but they often have to wait months to trickle through the legal process. In many cases, their families have little idea of what happened to them.
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In the letter, the Iraqi lawyers also shared their “grave concern for recent tragic conduct of contracted security forces.” The conduct of security companies working for the U.S. government, a hot topic in Congress, will likely receive renewed attention in the wake of findings by FBI investigators that Blackwater USA private security personnel killed 14 Iraqi civilians without justification during a Sept. 16 firefight.
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