BAGHDAD, Iraq
– Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales arrived in Baghdad on
Saturday to meet with and thank Department of Justice officials
working in Iraq to rebuild the country’s legal and law enforcement
infrastructure. This is Attorney General Gonzales’ third such visit
during his tenure as Attorney General.
“I am pleased to see first-hand, in my third visit to Iraq, the
progress that the men and women of the Justice Department have made
to rebuild Iraq’s legal system and law enforcement infrastructure.
They have accomplished an enormous amount of work in the past four
years by assisting in the training of tens of thousands of police,
security and correctional personnel and prosecutors, supporting
thousands of criminal investigations, and leading the Regime Crimes
Liaison Office,” said Attorney General Gonzales. “Their sacrifice
and commitment to the rule of law and protecting the rights and
liberties of Iraqi citizens is truly inspiring.”
Attorney General Gonzales was accompanied by Michael J. Sullivan,
director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
(ATF), John Clark, director of the U.S. Marshals Service, and other
Department of Justice staff.
The Attorney General met with Multi-National Force-Iraq Commanding
General David M. Petraeus upon arriving in Iraq. The Attorney
General’s agenda while in Iraq included meetings with Ambassador
Ryan C. Crocker, Department of Justice and U.S. military personnel,
and various Iraqi government officials including Chief Justice
Medhat al-Mahmoud of the Federal Supreme Court, Minister of Human
Rights Wijdan Mikha’il and Minister of the Interior Jawad al-Bulani.
FACT SHEET: DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE EFFORTS IN IRAQ
During the first weeks of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Department of
Justice deployed 26 officials to Baghdad to support the Department
of Defense’s plan to assess and reconstitute the justice and law
enforcement systems in Iraq. Today, the Department of Justice has
more than 200 employee and contractor personnel in the country as it
assists Iraqi efforts to promote freedom and security in a variety
of areas, including advice and training that will help to
re-establish essential law enforcement and security functions.
In March 2007, the Chief of Mission, U.S. Embassy, Baghdad, Iraq
announced a reorganization of all U.S. government Rule of Law and
Law Enforcement efforts in Iraq and named Assistant U.S. Attorney
James L. Santelle as the Rule of Law Coordinator at the Embassy. The
Rule of Law and Law Enforcement community has approximately 300
members under Chief of Mission authority, all of whom report to the
Deputy Chief of Mission through
Mr. Santelle. Mr. Santelle is responsible for coordinating their
activities and ensuring unity of effort with the Multi-National
Force-Iraq. The Justice Attaché at the Embassy, Judge Eric Levinson,
works closely with Mr. Santelle in meeting the goals of the U.S.
Mission in Iraq, which necessarily include Justice Department
prerogatives.
Through the transition of authority to the Interim Iraqi Government
in 2004, the Iraqi Transitional Government in April 2005, and the
first permanent elected Iraqi Government in May 2006, Justice
Department components have continued to support the Iraqi justice
system in the following ways:
DOJ Law Enforcement Components
The Department of Justice’s law enforcement components provide
special investigative training and assistance to Iraqi law
enforcement, including the following:
- The Major Crimes Task Force (MCTF)
routinely investigates high-profile cases involving
assassinations of government officials, prisoner-detainee abuses
and civil rights violations, and other instances of violent
crime in Baghdad and other regions of the country. The MCTF is
composed of special agents of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms
and Explosives (ATF), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA),
and the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) who provide managerial
supervision for, and technical assistance to, highly trained
Iraqi investigators.
- The FBI’s Legal Attaché in Iraq
provides law enforcement liaison and international assistance of
various types. The FBI also has a counterterrorism unit in Iraq
and deploys rotating teams of specialists to provide
counterterrorism training to the Iraqi police.
- The ATF provides specialized
investigative and administrative support to the Regime Crimes
Liaison Office (RCLO) and has been a key part of RCLO task force
rotations since July 2004. ATF has provided post-blast
investigation and explosives/IED-related training to the Iraqi
police, instructing 357 Iraqi police since December 2003. ATF is
part of the Combined Explosives Exploitation Cells with the
Department of Defense, and is establishing a four-person Attaché
Office at U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, to be deployed in October
2007.
- USMS personnel have provided
protective details, safe houses and secure courthouses for Iraqi
judges, and implemented a witness security program for Iraqi
trials. The USMS has trained hundreds of security personnel,
including 120 Iraqi police assigned to the Iraqi High Tribunal
courthouse.
- The DEA has delivered courses in
intelligence and intelligence analysis to the Iraqi police.
Regime Crimes Liaison Office
The Department of Justice organized and now supports the RCLO, which
was designated by the President as the lead U.S. government agency
for support to the Iraqi High Tribunal (IHT). The IHT has
jurisdiction to investigate charges of genocide, crimes against
humanity, war crimes and violations of certain Iraqi laws, and has
investigations underway against former Iraqi officials.
- The RCLO consists of
approximately 140 personnel, including about 80 in Baghdad
(investigative agents from the FBI, DEA, ATF, and USMS;
prosecutors; military officers; and foreign nationals).
- Approximately 35 Iraqis are
employed at the RCLO’s Secure Evidence Unit in Baghdad and 20
linguists work as translators in Iraq and other locations in the
region.
- At various times, the RCLO may
also employ as many as 20 personnel from the Army Corps of
Engineers and specialized contractors in the field. These
include anthropologists, archaeologists, pathologists, and other
forensic scientists working on the exhumations of mass graves
and the preservation of evidence, as well as investigative
consultants and international humanitarian law experts.
Prosecutorial Training and
Assistance
The primary focus of the Criminal Division’s Office of Overseas
Prosecutorial Development (OPDAT) is to assist the Iraqi justice
sector in enhancing sustainable institutions built on rule of law
principles. Its many accomplishments and activities to date include:
- In May and June 2003, OPDAT
deployed an assessment team to advise the Coalition Provisional
Authority on the state of the Iraqi justice system and provide
recommendations on comprehensive criminal justice reform,
judicial training and court policy implementation.
- The OPDAT Iraq Program currently
has six Resident Legal Advisors, including a lead RLA in Baghdad
working with the Justice Attaché at the U.S. Embassy. Four RLAs
are deployed to Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) in Iraqi
provinces – one in Mosul, Kirkuk, Tikrit and Baghdad – with a
fifth RLA assigned to the Law and Order Task Force in Baghdad.
The RLAs work with the Embassy, the Central Criminal Court of
Iraq, provincial courts, the Iraqi Higher Juridical Council and
court personnel on a variety of issues related to criminal
justice, rule of law, and other matters involving the delivery
of justice to the citizens of Iraq.
- Over 563 Iraqi jurists and
prosecutors have been trained in courses developed and/or
delivered by OPDAT RLAs in Iraq, including topics such as human
rights, scientific evidence and special challenges presented by
the prosecution of insurgency and terrorist cases.
- RLAs assisted in establishing a
judicial review commission that reviewed the credentials of
approximately 869 Iraqi judges. At the end of the process, 135
judges were moved due to Ba’athist Party affiliation and/or
evidence of corruption.
- OPDAT facilitated the creation
of a Central Criminal Court of Iraq panel for Ninewa Province (Mosul),
consisting of judges from Baghdad who travel to Mosul to hear
terrorism and major crime cases. The first four panels tried 135
cases involving 165 defendants, 96 of whom were convicted.
- RLAs coordinated and designed
curriculum for courses presented to 622 Iraqi police
investigators and police trainers relating to Iraqi criminal law
and the gathering and preservation of evidence.
Police Training and Assistance
The Criminal Division’s International Criminal Investigative
Training Assistance Program’s (ICITAP) efforts in Iraq, in
coordination with its Coalition partners, constitute the largest
international police training program ever undertaken. As a
component of the Civilian Police Assistance Training Team (CPATT),
ICITAP personnel have accomplished the following:
- More than 192,000 Iraqi police
have been trained in courses developed and/or delivered by
ICITAP/CPATT and ICITAP-trained Iraqi instructors.
- More than 22,500 Iraqi police
have participated in specialized and advanced training to date,
including programs covering basic criminal investigations,
interviews and interrogations, critical incident management,
civil disorder management, violent crimes and kidnapping.
- ICITAP/CPATT provided training
to the Iraq Police Service for planning and adequate security
during the January and December 2005 elections and the October
2005 referendum, resulting in international recognition for
Iraqi police conduct and effectiveness in successfully securing
polling stations.
- ICITAP/CPATT founded and
currently advises the Baghdad Police College, the Irbil Police
College, and 10 regional basic training facilities throughout
Iraq.
Anti-Corruption Training and
Assistance
The Iraq Commission on Public Integrity (CPI) was established as an
independent, autonomous governmental body whose mission is to
prevent and investigate corruption and promote transparency and the
rule of law throughout Iraq.
- CPI personnel from ICITAP
trained and rendered operational 146 Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU)
and 161 Special Investigative Unit (SIU) investigators who have
been given responsibility for over 6,190 public corruption cases
to date. These CPI officers are assigned to investigate alleged
acts of corruption and provide protection for public officials
who are threatened due to their cooperation with ongoing
corruption investigations.
- CPI personnel have trained over
203 Facilities Protection Service (FPS) guards.
- CPI personnel assisted with the
referral of more than 2,285 cases to the Central Criminal Court
of Iraq for prosecutorial opinion.
- CPI personnel have provided a
22-week polygraph school for 11 Iraqi investigators.
- CPI personnel have trained 99
Personal Security Detail Officers.
Correctional
Training and Assistance
The Iraq Corrections Service (ICS) Development Program has led the
U.S. government efforts to reconstitute, develop, and train
personnel who are critical to a modern Iraqi corrections system.
- Within the first three months,
ICS personnel reinstituted operations of prison facilities in
the Baghdad region and stood up an initial guard force to begin
intake of criminal detainees.
- More than 8,100 corrections
officers graduated from ICITAP-established training programs,
including the National Corrections Training Academy and various
regional pre-service training courses. Training focuses on human
rights practices and international standards.
- ICS personnel developed and
assisted with the implementation of a records review system that
ultimately resulted in the release of more than 175 detainees
from the Diyalah Provincial Jail. This records review system has
become a standard operating procedure and has provide essential
in the timely review of detainee cases.
- ICS personnel assisted in the
closure of the Abu Ghraib Prison in February 2006. Approximately
2,000 inmates were transferred out of the facility.
- Under the supervision and
training of ICITAP staff, ICS personnel continue to develop
practical skills and professional status in anticipation of
their assumption of management and security responsibility for
prisons and detention centers throughout Iraq.
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