Violence Breaks Out in Iraqi Prison
Elsewhere, U.N. Official Calls Recent Elections "Credible"

By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 28, 2005; 11:42 AM



BAGHDAD, Dec. 28 -- A shootout inside a Baghdad prison Wednesday left at least nine people dead and six wounded, including a U.S. soldier, the American military said in a statement.

Just after 8 a.m., at least 16 inmates tried to escape from the Iraqi-run prison called Camp Justice, located in the northern neighborhood of Kadhimiyah, storming the armory and seizing weapons, the military's statement said.

In the resulting firefight four guards and four inmates died, along with an interpreter, the military said.

Accounts of the incident, including the number of dead and wounded provided by U.S. and Iraqi sources, varied widely, with some reports suggesting as many as 20 prisoners had been killed or wounded.

Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a U.S. military spokesman, said Wednesday morning that six prisoners escaped during the fray. While the military's later statement said that all prisoners were accounted for, a spokesman for Iraq's Defense Ministry, Muhammed Askary, told the al-Arabiya television network Wednesday evening that Iraqi forces were still searching for three prisoners whose whereabouts were unknown.

Several sources said the inmates had begun the assault by overpowering a single guard and taking his rifle. The prison holds about 200 inmates, most incarcerated for violent crimes.

The condition of Iraqi prisons has come under intense scrutiny in recent months with the revelation of two facilities where many inmates were found to have been tortured. Maj. Gen. John D. Gardner, the commander of U.S.-run prisons in Iraq, said the United States would not hand over detainees or detention facilities to the Iraqi government until conditions in Iraqi prisons improved, the New York Times reported this week.

Elsewhere in Iraq Wednesday, officials from the country's election commission, under intense criticism from political parties who claim the country's Dec. 15 elections were rife with fraud, offered their strongest defense yet of the validity of the voting process.

As a show of support, they were joined on stage during a news conference in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone by Craig Jenness, a United Nations official who serves as the international representative to the committee.

"You cannot but conclude that these were transparent, credible and good elections," Jenness said.

Demonstrations against the elections, which were dominated in much of the country by the Shiite Muslim religious parties that control the government, have been held throughout the country, including Wednesday in Samarra.

About 1,500 complaints have been lodged and several groups have called for the election commission, an independent body, to disband.

"These elections have been carried out in accordance with the highest standards," said commissioner Hussein Hendawi at the news conference.

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