As New Year’s Day nears, U.S. troops prepare to hand over arrest authority to local j

[thedrifter]

As New Year’s Day nears, U.S. troops prepare to hand over arrest authority to local judges


By James Warden, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Sunday, December 28, 2008

BAGHDAD — On a recent Friday afternoon in Iraq, Maj. Rich Ramsey fiddles with a computer in a utilitarian second-story room on the grounds of the old Iraqi Ministry of Defense compound.

Ramsey is the officer in charge of his brigade’s prosecution task force — a four-man team dedicated to getting a handle on the Iraqi warrant process. In a few minutes, he’s going to update the brigade commander, battalion commanders and other senior officers on the brigade’s readiness for obtaining warrants to detain suspected insurgents. The meeting is occurring over the Internet, but it’s clear nonetheless that all eyes are on him.

The looming requirement for U.S. forces to obtain warrants may be a relatively minor course correction for line units, but higher level units are working day and night to ensure everyone is ready when the security agreement between Iraq and the United States takes effect Thursday.

Division and brigade prosecution task forces such as Ramsey’s are the nexus for this transition. The teams are dedicated to tracking warrants through the Byzantine Iraqi bureaucratic process. These teams will likely be fixtures of American brigades well after the security agreement takes effect.

Third Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, which oversees Ramsey’s group, started working with warrants in mid-November, said Maj. Rana Wiggins, the brigade judge advocate. The team began by ensuring that everyone understood the security framework agreement and Iraqi law. PowerPoint presentations helped them learn the intricacies of the Iraqi penal code.

"It was basically a crash course on the criminal system," Wiggins said.

The differences from the American process are real. Eyewitness accounts are more valuable than forensic evidence. The judge conducts a mini-hearing before issuing a warrant. Turn-around time is longer.

"I’ve gained an incredible respect for the process of civil law in Iraq," Ramsey said. "The Iraqis are ready for civil law. They want civil law."

Most warrants are issued by local investigative judges, so the Americans next started getting to know them. While the team did learn each judge’s individual legal interpretations, this ultimately proved to be a false start.

Nearly all the judges said they would prefer to work through Iraqi authorities.

This led the Americans to the Iraqi army’s warrant process. The Iraqi army formerly could detain people without warrants, said Maj. Dex Davis, an operations adviser who also works with the chief investigator for eastern Baghdad. But that army has been obtaining warrants since February 2007 — and has put a particular emphasis on warrants in the past six months.

In that time, the Iraqis have developed a warrant-request process where multiple people must attach their memorandum to the packet before the chief investigator asks the investigating judge for a warrant. After the warrant is issued, the packet creeps its way back down the same chain. A spidery hand-drawn chart on an easel in the 3/4 prosecution team’s office illustrates the maze that warrant requests must travel before they are approved.

Leaders say the process is still too new to determine the average time it takes to get a warrant, but most say approval takes at least four days. An Iraqi judge may even want to talk to some people before approving the warrant. "There is no midnight call to the judge," Wiggins said.

The prosecution task force is submitting warrant requests for as many targets as possible so that they can detain the suspects once the security agreement takes effect. Many of those warrants are for suspects whose whereabouts are still unknown. Because they are submitting packets faster than they are finding new suspects, the heavy workload should slow eventually.

"We just reviewed our most-wanted guys and all the battalions’ most-wanted guys," said Lt. Col. Mike Pemrick, the 3/4 deputy commander. "I would think that we would have warrants on the great majority of them by Jan. 1."

The team has gotten a good handle on the warrant process in the past month, but their work is far from over. They are monitoring each and every warrant request to ensure it’s moving toward approval. Ramsey keeps tabs on all suspects and the status of their warrant packets — where they’re at and what’s preventing them from getting approved.

Meanwhile, lawyers on the team are researching the few remaining legal questions: Do you need warrants for a cordon and search operation? What about traffic checkpoints?

As people came online for Ramsey’s afternoon meeting, he keyed the microphone and started to speak — for the moment, the center of the brigade’s attention.



STRIPES SERIES:
A new way
of doing business

American forces are gearing up for a key transition in the arrest and prosecution of insurgents in Iraq. The security pact between Iraq and the U.S., which goes into effect Thursday, will subject this process to Iraqi laws. In a three-day series, Stars and Stripes examines how the military is preparing for these changes.

Today: Prosecution task forces
Day Two: The troops
Day Three: The Iraqis

What the security pact says about arrest and detention

Article 22
Detention

1. No detention or arrest may be carried out by the United States Forces (except with respect to detention or arrest of members of the United States Forces and of the civilian component) except through an Iraqi decision issued in accordance with Iraqi law and pursuant to Article 4.

2. In the event the United States Forces detain or arrest persons as authorized by this Agreement or Iraqi law, such persons must be handed over to competent Iraqi authorities within 24 hours from the time of their detention or arrest.

3. The Iraqi authorities may request assistance from the United States Forces in detaining or arresting wanted individuals.

4. Upon entry into force of this Agreement, the United States Forces shall provide to the Government of Iraq available information on all detainees who are being held by them. Competent Iraqi authorities shall issue arrest warrants for persons who are wanted by them. The United States Forces shall act in full and effective coordination with the Government of Iraq to turn over custody of such wanted detainees to Iraqi authorities pursuant to a valid Iraqi arrest warrant and shall release all the remaining detainees in a safe and orderly manner, unless otherwise requested by the Government of Iraq and in accordance with Article 4 of this Agreement.

5. The United States Forces may not search houses or other real estate properties except by order of an Iraqi judicial warrant and in full coordination with the Government of Iraq, except in the case of actual combat operations conducted pursuant to Article 4.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Soldiers learning the ropes of the Iraqi legal system, but some uncertainty over process remains
By James Warden, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Sunday, December 28, 2008

BAGHDAD — Maj. Dex Davis doesn’t exactly blend in when he walks around the old Ministry of Defense compound in Baghdad.

Everyone from Iraqi soldiers to senior officers smile and joke with the gregarious military transition team member. Those who know him well greet Davis with a handshake-cum-chest bump that shows obvious affection between the American and his Iraqi counterparts.

Prosecution task forces may be the ones monitoring the warrant process, but much of their work is done through military transition team members like Davis who have developed a personal rapport with the Iraqis involved in the process. Davis advises Iraq’s chief investigator for eastern Baghdad. Like other MiTT members who once advised Iraqi security forces on combat operations, he’s now spending more of his time ensuring that American warrant requests get approved.

Americans oversee just two parts of the warrant approval process: collecting the evidence and giving the packets an initial review. The rest is up to the Iraqis, some of whom can bring a warrant request to a quick halt.

"It’s not a lock step, set thing like Americans are used to," said Capt. Brian Patton, the adviser to the Rusafa Area Command’s intelligence officer. "It’s more about relationships."

Patton began his job as a liaison between coalition forces and Iraqi forces, paying particular attention to helping his Iraqi counterpart with intelligence analysis — or, as he said, "more of the pointy-ended-stick-type stuff."

But the RAC intelligence officer must sign off on every American warrant for eastern Baghdad. Starting about 1 ½ to 2 months ago, warrants started taking up more of Patton’s time. He now checks on the status of the warrants every night and goes through the entire list of approved warrants once a week.

Because the Iraqis have been required to obtain warrants longer than the Americans, many MiTTs learned about the process long before American brigades and divisions launched their formal efforts.

Davis, for example, began researching warrants in April when they took on increased emphasis in Iraqi briefings. He sat down with the Iraqi chief investigator for the other half of Baghdad and had him walk through the entire warrant process. When faced with a legal question, Davis can now recall the pertinent sections of Iraqi code off the top of his head.

The learning curve has sometimes turned the tables on who advises whom. Maj. Rich Ramsey — the officer in charge of a brigade prosecution task force — recalled the first time he took a warrant packet to Lt. Col. Satar, the chief investigator for eastern Baghdad. Satar told him that they looked good, then walked Ramsey down the hall to show him how to get the memorandums of approval that are required before a warrant request goes to the chief investigator.

Said Patton: "As we’ve had to dig in here, we’ve probably got knowledge we should have had all along."

It’s still unclear how much time the extra work will add to the MiTTs already long days. Davis estimates that he spends just two hours a day on warrants. Patton, on the other hand, could see a sharper increase. Until last week, he’d received just 70 packets in his time working with warrants. On Thursday, he received 200 packets in a single batch.

"It’s going to be a long process," Patton said. "The next guy will have this as a big part of his job."

Ellie