My job

My job today was to relax because Friday is our "day off"...day off meaning we don't have to go into our office (which is just another trailer that is less half a football field away from my trailer). Even though there is not much to do I look forward to Fridays. I sleep in, spend extra time at the gym, spend an hour or so sitting in the sun outside my trailer painting my toenails (although i think that will soon stop because we are hitting the 100+ weather now...and I have heard it gets up to 120+). I got care packages from back home - a mattress from my cousin and beer from my brother (and he did such a good job packing it and taping the package shut they didn't x-ray it and confiscate it...unlike my unlucky colleagues who merely receive an empty box with x-rays that tease them with what was removed).

But usually my job entails meeting with and establishing relationships with the legal community here in Karbala and determining their needs and figuring out how I can work with them to meet those needs. Needless to say, many times I can't. I've been here in Karbala over two months now and still meeting people and figuring out whose who in the community but basically what I have boiled it down to is that my job focuses on five major areas: judges/judiciary, prisons, law schools, ngos and police. I've been more successful in some of these areas than other - I meet with the chief judge on a weekly or every other weekly basis and have made contact with some good ngos and there is a private law school here in karbala that i have a good relationship with. Not so successful - my efforts to visit the public law school in karbala have been a failure because the students (understandably) don't want military presence on their campus and therefore don't want me there. The prisons - i have yet to visit one and when i do i have a feeling the conditions will be dreadful and there will be very little i can do about it.

As I said, i meet almost weekly with the chief judge - he is an intelligent, brave and thoughful man. I respect him greatly. Usually when i meet with him I have a list of things to discuss. This week my list contained several items: gauging his interest in taking a tour of a forensics lab in baghdad (because i push to have the judges move away from the current confession based system towards using fingerprints, blood evidence, etc); asking him to check on the case of one of our locally employed staff (his wife and child were kidnapped and his wife raped and no suspects have been apprehended yet- suspicions are that he was targeted because he works with us); asking him what basic need he has for the court (for example - copiers, scanners, computers...while the main karbala courthouse where he works is far and away better than the more rural courthouses it still is lacking in many many areas including basic supplies). After we finished chatting I asked him if I could take a tour of the court...whenever I have visited him I have always gone straight from the front gate to his office and have never seen the remainder of the courthouse. He told me that there were several criminal trials going on and i was welcome to sit in on some. I was eager to take him up on the offer because I had yet to actually observe any real court proceedings.

I sat in the back of a courtroom where criminal cases were being heard. There was a three judge panel in front, a prosecutor and defense attorney and court clerk. The Iraqi legal system is very different than the American system. The prosecutor and defense attorney have minimal roles...they do opening and closing remarks but the judges do the questioning of all witnesses. The first case was a vehicular homicide...a man in his early 20s had run over a family of Bedouins and killed two of them. The remaining members of the family were called in one by one (including the wife of one of the victims...covered head to toe in black including the full facial cover - during her testimony she lifted part of her facial veil so that the whites of her eyes were exposed) and asked if they wished to file charges against the man who ran over their relatives. Each one said that they did not wish to file charges because it was a tribal matter than had been settled within the tribe and that justice was in the hands of god. After all of the family members had testified (which took all of about 2 minutes per person) the judge questioned the accused. The accused stated that he did not have a drivers license which to me seemed like a pertinent fact until my interpreter told me that the agency that issues licenses had not operated since 2005 so even if he were eligible he would not be able to get a license. In the end the judge let the accused go with a suspension on driving for three years because the family had not wanted to press charges.

The second case I watched was a man accused of terrorism. The accused entered the courtroom escorted by an armed guard who was holding his hands behing his back. The accused was visibly nervous, muttering (possibly praying) to himself, and he looked as if he hadn't slept in days. He was accused of supporting insurgents (JAM - Jaish Al Madhi or Madhi Army) during the riots and murders in 2007 during Shabaniyah (a festival marking the birth of the last Shiite imam where millions make a pilgrimage to Karbala). The one and only witness to this was an Iraqi police officer who was called to the stand. When asked if he knew the accused he said "no, i've heard of him because we are from the same town but have never seen him." when asked why he signed a sworn statement against the accused that proclaimed the accused was a terrorist involved with the insurgents the officer stated he was forced to sign the statement. With that the officer was released from the stand. No questions of who forced him to sign or other follow-up. The only other testimony was from the accused. When the judge asked him if he was innocent or guilty the man broke down. He was sobbing while he was explaining that he had been incarcerated for over three months and prior to incarceration he was a member of the Iraqi Army. He said that he had spent his career fighting againt insurgents and the JAM. He stated that during the time he was accused of participating in riots and other terrorist activity he was on army duty. He claimed that his neighbor had fabricated the story about him being a terrorist because he had a property dispute with his neighbor and his neighbor had been able to steal his land while he was in prison. Through sobs, the accused said that his young daughter had been diagnosed with brain cancer while he was in jail and had lost both her eyes due to the cancer. The man's family sat next to me in the back of the courtroom with tears streaming down their faces. After his testimony the prosecutor gave his closing remarks. The prosecutor said there was no evidence againt this man and the man had been on duty during the time he was accused and the report against him had been falsified. The defense attorney then repeated the same argument. The judge rendered his decision setting the man free. This entire process took under ten minutes.

How easy it seems for the neighbor to make up something to do with "terrorism" and have this man picked up and held for over three months. Then again, look at what we did with Guantanemo detainees. I saw a documentary the other say about the Chinese Uighur detainees who were found to have no ties to terrorism (merely were in the wrong place at the wrong time and got picked up) but yet have been held for something like six years...