Frustrated Iraqi teenagers rue long detentions

By Haider Salahudeen

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Teenager Ali Mohammed has been in an overcrowded Iraqi youth detention facility for five months.

He says he has no idea what led him to be considered a security threat and struggles with a speech impediment as he tells his story.

"They told me they would only question me for five minutes and I have been here since the 25th of April," the lightly-moustached and bare-footed Mohammed stuttered.

"I suffer from epilepsy, a weak spine and a speech defect."

Mohammed's case is just one of thousands of prolonged detentions that underline the Iraqi judicial system's struggle to sift through the large number of detainees held in Iraq.

Tareq al-Hashemi, Iraq's Sunni vice president, visited western Baghdad's Ahdath youth detention centre last week in an effort to highlight the woeful state of detainees.

Expressing surprise at Mohammed's detention, he asked what information he was likely to provide under questioning given his speech defect.

"How are they going to interrogate him?" he told a group of journalists as he toured Ahdath where alleged security detainees are kept with all the others.