Attacks by drones on prisons holding ISIS militants in Iraq have raised concerns about the country’s vulnerability to the US-Israel war against Iran, a former interior minister warned.
Tehran-aligned militias have joined the fray, firing missiles and drones at bases hosting American troops and diplomatic missions in Iraq.
Attacks have been launched on Harir Air Base and the US consulate in Erbil in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, the US embassy in Baghdad and Camp Victory at the capital's international airport, which houses Camp Cropper, a high-security detention site for ISIS prisoners. Iraqi airspace is being used by all warring parties, as US strikes are conducted on militia positions.
Baqir Jabir Al Zubaidi, who served as Iraq's interior minister from April 2005 to May 2006, confirmed a drone hit the notorious Abu Ghraib prison last week, and that one of the attacks on Camp Victory “caused unrest in Cropper prison that prompted the Counter-Terrorism Service to intervene and contain the situation”.
“Regardless of what’s being said about the sources of these attacks, Iraq’s airspace has become open to all forms of intervention,” Mr Al Zubaidi wrote on his Facebook page late on Tuesday. Other parties may be “involved in attempting to target prisons, which increases the severity of the challenges Iraq faces”.
The former minister warned: “The prisons of Iraq are a vulnerability in the security situation. They hold not ordinary individuals but hardcore terrorists, elite leaders, ideologues and planners of terrorism.”
He called for “monitoring them around the clock, isolating them so that they can’t form cells and denying them access to communication devices”.
Al Qaeda in Iraq and ISIS have previously launched attacks on prisons in an attempt to allow inmates to leave. In 2013, there was a mass jailbreak at Abu Ghraib, resulting in the escape of at least 500 inmates, many of them high-ranking Al Qaeda members.
Iraq has held thousands of ISIS militants since declaring the terrorist group militarily defeated in late 2017 after a gruelling, nearly three-year war to drive them out of major cities in northern and western parts of the country.
Last month, US Central Command transferred about 5,700 ISIS fighters from Syria to Iraq as the government in Damascus extended its control to areas of north-eastern Syria overrun by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which administered their prisons.
Shortly after receiving them, Iraq’s judiciary authorities began investigating the militants before putting them on trial for crimes they committed in Iraq.
The government in Baghdad has also called on other nations, especially within the European Union, to begin repatriating their citizens who joined ISIS. The international community has been watching the process closely, with many expressing support for Iraq's efforts and offering logistical and financial backing.
Last month, Russia and Turkey announced their readiness to take back citizens of their countries held in Iraqi prisons for joining ISIS.
Qassim Al Araji, Iraqi National Security Adviser, said Canada is also preparing to repatriate citizens after he met Christopher Boehm, the Canadian ambassador to Iraq, in Baghdad.
The recently transferred ISIS militants come from 61 countries, and include 160 Turks, 130 Russians and five Canadians.
Some European nations face legal limits on how long people can be held on suspicion of membership of a terrorist organisation, while Iraq argues that many detainees committed crimes on Iraqi soil so can be tried in the country.
ISIS overran large parts of Iraq and Syria in the summer of 2014. The group led a campaign of widespread and systematic breaches of international human rights and humanitarian law. Three years later, Iraqi forces, backed by a US-led international coalition, reclaimed all ISIS-held territory after gruelling fighting that left thousands dead and vast areas in ruins.
