BAGHDAD, Sept. 22 (UPI) -- The United States still holds thousands of detainees from the shuttered Camp Bucca in Baghdad, a U.S. military official said Tuesday.
Many of Camp Bucca detainees have been released into Iraqi society while others were transferred to Iraqi detainment facilities because they have arrest warrants, U.S. Maj. Gen. James P. Hunt, deputy commander of coalition forces in Iraq, said during a news briefing.
"And we still have a large number of detainees," Hunt said, adding that he was unsure of the exact number, but that it numbered in the thousands.
Camp Bucca, near Basra, closed Thursday. As part of a security agreement, U.S. forces released nearly 6,000 detainees and transferred just under 4,100 detainees to Iraqi forces since January, he said.
"We will ... look at all those detainees, review all of those detainees the same way we did the ones that have been released or turned over to the government of Iraq," Hunt said of those still in U.S. custody. "We'll look at their record. We'll look at what kind of evidence there is against them. We'll discuss this with the government of Iraq, release the ones that we have no case against, and keep the ones that the government of Iraq has a case with."
Terms of the agreement, signed last November, state detainee transfers between coalition forces and the Iraqi government must be conducted with arrest warrants or detention orders, the U.S. military said. If detainees don't have arrest warrants or detention orders, they must be released.
