Camp Bucca

Coordinates: 30 ° 4 ′ 1 ″  N , 47 ° 52 ′ 29 ″  E

Camp Bucca​

Iraq

Families are waiting for an appointment to see their loved ones held at Camp Bucca.

Camp Bucca was an American prison camp near the port city of Umm Qasr in southern Iraq . It existed from 2003 to 2009. Before that, the highest building in Iraq was located on the site, a 492 meter high transmission mast.

history

The name was intended to recall Ronald Bucca, a firefighter from the New York City Fire Department who was killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks .

There were prisoners of war , civilian internees and security prisoners under US custody in the camp . The official capacity was 5,000 prisoners. The camp was initially set up in March 2003 by British invasion troops as a provisional prisoner-of-war camp and expanded within a few days to accommodate 8,000 prisoners of war. The first camp commandant was Colonel Gil Baldwin of the 1st The Queen's Dragoon Guards .

After the main fighting ended, the camp was taken over by the 800th Military Police Brigade of the US Army and expanded into one of the largest prison camps in Iraq alongside Camp Cropper in Abu Ghuraib . Several initiatives to close the camp (among other things because of its temporary nature, its remote location, the unfavorable desert climate, and the endeavor to hand over the prisoners to the Iraqi authorities) failed due to the continuous influx of new prisoners.

The warehouse was finally closed in September 2009.

A number of leaders of the IS were prisoners in this prison, including from February to December 2004 Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi , who worked in the prison significantly on the development of the organization and until his death in late 2019 under the title adopted in June 2014 Caliph Ibrahim ”board.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ www.emporis.com: "Umm Qasr TV Mast"
2. ↑ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/7540555.stm
3. ↑ Huffington Post (September 16, 2009): Camp Bucca: Military Closes Largest Detention Camp in Iraq ( Memento of the original of August 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved February 4, 2010.  
4. ↑ Raniah Salloum: Leader of the "Islamic State" - The Brothers in Camp Bucca Spiegel Online, November 5, 2014.
5. ↑ Martin Chulov: Isis: the inside story, in: The Guardian of December 11, 2014, accessed on February 16, 2015 (English).