Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim Al Badry, is also known as ‘Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi' the head of ISIS. In February 2004 US occupation forces in Iraq detained Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim Al Badry and sent him to Camp Bucca the US occupation's second largest prison in Iraq located in southern Iraq near the Persian Gulf. His 10 months in Camp Bucca radicalized Al Badry profoundly transforming him into ‘Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi' and altering the direction of his life.
Was Iraq's Top Terrorist Radicalized at a US-Run Prison?
By Jenna McLaughlin
But within a couple years of the US invasion, Baghdadi was a prisoner in Camp Bucca, the US-run detainment facility in Umm Qasr, Iraq. And a US compound commander stationed at that prison—and other military officials—have in recent weeks wondered whether Baghdadi's stint there radicalized him and put him on the path to taking over ISIS in 2010 and guiding the movement to its recent military victories.
The reason why he was apprehended is not publicly known; he could have been arrested on a specific charge or as part of a large sweep of insurgents or insurgent supporters. (A confidential Red Cross report leaked in May 2004 suggested than around 90 percent of detainees of Iraqi origin were arrested "by mistake.") Army Colonel Kenneth King, the commanding US officer at Camp Bucca in 2009, recently told the Daily Beast that he distinctly remembered a man resembling Baghdadi: "He was a bad dude, but he wasn't the worst of the worst." King noted he was "not surprised" that such a radical figure emerged from the facility.
Rumsfeld wanted the insurgency crushed so he put pressure on commanders who responded by casting a wide net in their search for violent militants. As we so often see ratcheting up coercive force can have some nasty unintended consequences.
James Skylar Gerrond, a former US Air Force security forces officer and a compound commander at Camp Bucca in 2006 and 2007, says that he believes Baghdadi's stay at the prison contributed to his radicalization—or at least bolstered his extremism. After Baghdadi proclaimed the Islamic State a new nation and himself its leader, Gerrond tweeted, "Many of us at Camp Bucca were concerned that instead of just holding detainees, we had created a pressure cooker for extremism." Gerrond is now a civilian working for the Department of Defense.
"Like many Iraq vets, I've been following the situation with ISIS for the last several weeks and trying to understand why things are falling apart so badly in the region," Gerrond tells Mother Jones in an email. "When some of Baghdadi's personal history started to come out, such as the fact that he was detained at Camp Bucca around the same time I was deployed there, I started to reflect on my deployment and what the conditions were at the facility during that time."
Gerrond notes that US military officials in charge of the prison fretted that prisoners could be radicalized at the facility: "This was something that everyone in the chain of command [for Camp Bucca] (and other detention facilities) were always concerned with." Maj. General Douglas Stone, the deputy commander for detainee operations in 2007, told Newsweek that year that potential radicalization was a "very real concern" at Camp Bucca.
U.S. Actions in Iraq Fueled Rise of a Rebel
By TIM ARANGO and ERIC SCHMITT
“He was a street thug when we picked him up in 2004,” said a Pentagon official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters. “It’s hard to imagine we could have had a crystal ball then that would tell us he’d become head of ISIS.”
At every turn, Mr. Baghdadi’s rise has been shaped by the United States’ involvement in Iraq — most of the political changes that fueled his fight, or led to his promotion, were born directly from some American action. And now he has forced a new chapter of that intervention, after ISIS’ military successes and brutal massacres of minorities in its advance prompted President Obama to order airstrikes in Iraq.
As the Americans were winding down their war in Iraq, they focused on trying to wipe out Al Qaeda in Iraq’s remaining leadership. In April 2010, a joint operation by Iraqi and American forces made the biggest strike against the group in years, killing its top two figures near Tikrit.
A month later, the group issued a statement announcing new leadership, and Mr. Baghdadi was at the top of the list. The Western intelligence community scrambled for information.
More of those nasty unintended consequences from trying bolster the Maliki led client government as US forces exited.
Largest of America's two prisons in Iraq to shut
By Martin Chulov
Inmates at Camp Bucca were split into three areas, Sunni, Shia and a section for those thought to have been under threat from others in the prison. Critics of the facility say it had in effect become a terror training institute, run by resentful inmates under a strict interpretation of Islamic law.
"It is al-Qa'ida central down there," said Sheikh Ali Hatem Suleiman, a tribal leader from Anbar province. "What better way to teach everyone how to become fanatical than put them all together for scant reason, then deprive them?"
Camp Bucca was like a Boot Camp for Iraqi militants.
Inside Camp Bucca
Correspondent Dan Rather talks to two of those soldiers. Their former commander is now claiming that they abused Iraqis as an act of revenge for what happened to Jessica Lynch.
This charge, and these soldiers, along with their accounts of life in Camp Bucca, raise serious questions about the whole prisoner detention program in Iraq.
60 Minutes II gets a behind-the-scenes look at the prison camp where they worked, through the eyes of another young soldier who videotaped her tour of duty in Iraq. What you will hear is her voice, and the blunt attitudes she poured out on the videotape she shot at Camp Bucca.
"I gotta be careful with my video camera because we're not allowed to have video cameras here," says the 20-year-old woman behind the camera.
The soldier, who doesn't want to be identified by name, said she joined the military to get help with the cost of college. She ended up guarding thousands of prisoners in Iraq.
"If we shoot any more of the Iraqis, or attack any of them, they're gonna supposedly come in and attack the camp," she says on tape. "But we'll believe that when it actually happens, because we've already killed another Iraqi just last night when I was working. So I don't know what's going on..."
This is video taken after a riot broke out at Camp Bucca in 2005 following a guard burning a Quran.
This slap on the wrist sure didn't put a halt to prisoner abuse at Camp Bucca.
Torture, Rendition, and other Abuses against Captives in US Custody
July 27, 2003: Pentagon Announces Charges Against Four Soldiers over Detainee Abuse in IraqEdit event
The Pentagon announces that four US soldiers from a Pennsylvania-based Army Reserve have been charged with punching, kicking, and breaking the bones of Iraqi captives at Camp Bucca near Umm Qasr in connection with the May 12 incident (see May 12, 2003). This is the first known case where US soldiers are charged for alleged illegal treatment toward prisoners of war. [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 7/27/2003] By January 2004, the soldiers will have all been discharged after Brig. Gen. Ennis Whitehead III determines that they had kicked prisoners or encouraged others to do so. [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 11/25/2003; ASSOCIATED PRESS, 1/16/2004]
Entity Tags: Ennis Whitehead III
Category Tags: Disciplinary Actions, Camp Bucca (Iraq)
Also see gjohnsit's exellent hisrory of ISIS:
The Rise of ISIS
From 2003 through at least 2005 Camp Bucca had a culture of violent abuse of the prisoners being held there including shooting them. Is it any wonder that prisoners who are tormented and and subject to arbitrary shootings should hate the country that6 invaded their's (unprovoked), and who inflicted that kind of abuse on him and a largely random collection of his fellow countrymen?
Still smug?
All of this suggests al Baghdadi was radicalized by US Army MPs at Camp Bucca in 2004 far more than his study of Islam.