The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
Part of the
reason identified for this rise had been a weakness in the due
process where
prisoners
were kept on remand without judicial review.
SSR
projects in the justice sector were small in comparison with
efforts being made to
reform the
Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police Service:
•
In January
2004, DFID approved a contribution of £2.2m over two
years
towards the
International Legal Assistance Consortium (ILAC). A review
of
the
programme in June 2006 stated “that the project was put together
under
pressure
rapidly to get programme activities started with some
quick‑win
activities
… The pressure to move fast, however, may well have sown the
seeds
for the
eventual, limited impact”.48
•
A support
programme for prisons in southern Iraq was approved during
the
summer of
2004. The UK awarded £1.7m to the programme (after a bid
of
£5.53m) to
train and mentor staff. All prisons within the CPA(South)
boundary
run by the
Iraqi Prison Service were overseen and maintained by the
UK.
•
The UK
contributed some staff towards the EU JustLex programme that
began
in February
2005. The programme was an integrated police and Rule of
Law
mission for
Iraq by Member States arranging senior management training for
the
police,
judiciary and prison service. Over four years, it comprised 40
staff from
across the
EU and spent roughly €30m.
As with the
majority of SSR programmes, success seemed to be measured by
the
number of
Iraqi staff trained. The programmes were not effective in solving
the underlying
problems of
corruption and intimidation that thwarted significant
improvement.
Officials
were still reporting in May 2006 that justice continued to be “the
missing link”.49
In March
2007, the Better Basra plan described Iraq’s judiciary as “weak and
unable to
prosecute
serious crime”.50
Prisons
were described as “old, overcrowded” and said to “not
meet
minimum international human rights standards”. That assessment
suggested that
little
progress had been made from the UK’s early assessments of Iraq’s
justice sector.
Severe
overcrowding was still an issue in December 2007 when an FCO
official reported
that:
“Through a
combination of negligence, incompetence, poor co‑ordination
and
lack of
adequate facilities it can take a long time to process detainees
through the
investigative,
judicial and correctional systems.”51
85.
After the UK
and US ceased to be Occupying Powers in Iraq in June 2004,
SSR
was
conducted under the authority of resolution 1546 (2004) and the
annexed letters
from
Dr Ayad Allawi, the Iraqi Prime Minister, and US Secretary of
State Mr Colin Powell.
48
Report
DFID, 30 June 2006, ‘Iraq International Legal Consortium Justice
Sector’.
49
Email FCO
[junior official] to IPU [junior official], 25 May 2006, ‘Rule of
Law – The Justice Sector’.
50
Letter
Marsden to Aldred, 2 March 2007, ‘Better Basra’ attaching Paper, 1
March 2007, ‘Better Basra
Mark 3: The
2007 Plan’.
51
Minute FCO
[junior official] to PS/SofS [FCO], 20 December 2007, ‘Iraq:
Detention and Reconciliation:
UK Approach
for 2008’.
430