CAMP BUCCA, Iraq, 28 April 2003 — Clapping for joy and chanting “we love Bush,” some 200 Iraqi prisoners of war were released yesterday from the main POW camp of the US-led forces into a new life free of Saddam Hussein.
“God has rid us of Saddam” and “no more statues, no more military service,” sang the prisoners. They filed onto buses and trucks, seemingly oblivious to the high winds and blinding dust storm, and drove off to leave behind them the thousands of other prisoners still held in the camp.
Most were without shoes and dressed in rags or US Army issued blue prison overalls. Looking haggard but happy and relieved, they clutched blankets provided by the camp, which has also been called Camp Freddy and lies near the southern port of Umm Qasr. Many prisoners said it was their only possession.
Ahmed Kazim Azzam, 32, told AFP he was thrilled to go home to his wife and seven children but, like all the prisoners who talked to reporters, he said he was penniless.
“They treated us well here,” said Azzam, still wearing his Iraqi Army green camouflage jacket.
“Iraq is better without Saddam,” he added, explaining that he had spent a year in an Iraqi prison as punishment for trying to avoid military service.
“Here was much better,” he declared, looking around him at the dusty, sprawling British-built camp housing mostly Iraqi soldiers, but some civilians too.
US and British troops guarding the stretch of desert enclosed by razor wire and sand barriers have had to cope with frequent riots that pitted the inmates against each other.
Fights involving water bottles filled with sand or rocks being thrown and tent stakes wielded as spears erupted regularly, a US psychological operations officer, Maj. Joel Droba, said earlier this month.
But such disputes appeared forgotten for the lucky prisoners released yesterday. As they mounted the buses, an American soldier cut off their identification bands and handed them cigarettes and boxes of food rations from the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The boxes contained cooking oil, rice, sugar and tea. Kasim Dafeel, a 16-year-old from Karbala, gave a broad smile but said he had “no job, nothing” and was merely thankful Saddam’s regime had fallen and that he was being freed.
Faleh Raheem, 35, a soldier who had surrendered to the coalition, said he felt “really good” going back to a Saddam-free life in Baghdad.
But he complained that “Saddam left us with nothing,” adding that he would now have to find himself a job to support his wife and three children.
The camp, run by the 800th Military Police Brigade, held some 7,000 prisoners at the height of the war. US military officials said about 5,800 were still here.
Maj. Stacy Garrity told reporters the prisoners have access to running water and showers and that all of them live in tents.
The more “dangerous” prisoners were segregated in different compounds, some housing Iraqi officers and colonels, she said.
“We have contract feeding for them. They have an Iraqi chef” and are served Iraqi dishes, said Garrity, anticipating that “probably half the camp will be gone in the next week and a half.”
“We’ve given them humanitarian rations, with water and cigarettes, which they wanted more than food... there’s a lot of smiling faces back there,” she said. As if to prove the point, prisoners on one bus shouted, “USA, USA” as they reached out for more cigarettes before heading for home.
