Iraqis foiled hours before Great Escape from US prison camp(not so great escape)

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[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Iraqis foiled hours before Great Escape from US prison camp(not so great escape)

Posted: 8/24/2005 7:03:05 PM EDT

Iraqis foiled just hours before their Great Escape from US prison camp
Oliver Poole in Baghdad
25/08/2005
www.telegraph.co.uk
Hundreds of Iraqi prisoners held in one of America's most heavily fortified jails were hours from escaping through a 357ft tunnel dug with shovels fashioned from tent poles, the United States has revealed.

The Iraqi prisoners had been digging for three months without detection in an operation their American guards have nicknamed The Great Escape after the Hollywood film of the 1944 breakout by British prisoners of war from Stalag Luft III.

Soil was dragged to the surface in five-gallon water jugs tethered to 200ft of rope and then spread across the prison's football pitch.

A brief report of the find at Camp Bucca, a military prison in southern Iraq where 6,000 detainees are held, was made public in March. But it only emerged yesterday how close the inmates had got to freedom when the camp's officers gave out details of the plot.

The tunnel was conceived by 600 Sunni inmates held in one of the 12 compounds at the site, where prisoners are housed in tents or plywood buildings with corrugated roofs. Work began beneath the wooden floorboards of one of the tents. Teams worked after dark, digging about three feet each night.

Lights were built from radio diodes and the sides made firm with milk. The exit was hidden under cardboard and opened into a partly concealed trench.

The guards had suspected something was wrong. Satellite imagery had shown the football field changing colour. Some of the soil had also been placed under floorboards, causing them to rise, while two dozen toilets had been clogged with soil.

Four informants had told them of a tunnel but none would say where. But on March 24, the day on which the escape was due, another informant revealed in which compound to look.

Guards put prisoners into a holding area and destroyed the tunnel with a bulldozer. "These guys moved 10 tons of soil in eight weeks," the prison's assistant operations officer, Lt Shawn Talmadge, told the Washington Post.

"The tunnel, it's like perfectly made. It's nice and smooth. Extremely intelligent, these guys are."

Eight days later, Shia detainees in a nearby compound rioted after four clerics held at the camp were put in a maximum security area. The US responded with rubber bullets and tear gas.

The riot was only suppressed when 200 heavily armed troops surrounded the compound and a helicopter was brought in to flatten the tents with the downdraught from its rotors.

Posted: 8/24/2005 7:05:55 PM EDT

[#1]

Do they have coolers like the germans?

Posted: 8/24/2005 7:08:11 PM EDT

[#2]

Kinda hard to dig out of a tramp steamer. Besides, if they hole the hull and the tramp is in the middle of shark infested waters out smack dab of nowhere, would anybody care?

Posted: 8/24/2005 7:20:27 PM EDT

[#3]

Iraqis foiled just hours before their Great Escape from US prison camp

They are not "Iraqis" ...They are terrorists.

They don't even want to bring up the fact that the USA is engaged in the war on terror anymore. They use the words "Iraqis" and "Iraq" like its their favorite buzzword "Vietnam."

Scott

Posted: 8/24/2005 7:23:33 PM EDT

[#4]

Quoted:
Iraqis foiled just hours before their Great Escape from US prison camp

They are not "Iraqis" ...They are terrorists.

They don't even want to bring up the fact that the USA is engaged in the war on terror anymore. They use the words "Iraqis" and "Iraq" like its their favorite buzzword "Vietnam."

Scott

+1
That sucks, I leave the article titles as "original" as possible to prevent\reduce dupage

It should have been titled: scumbag terrorists captured in Iraq are nailed attempting prison escape

Posted: 8/24/2005 7:31:50 PM EDT

[#5]

Sorry 'bout that and understood.

I forgot to rant about how the geneva convention doesn't even apply to these losers. If they can't be squeezed for info, why are they even alive?

Scott

Posted: 8/25/2005 4:12:22 AM EDT

[#6]

They should have let them go out the tunnel, sealed both ends and flooded it.

Sallah and Khaied have gone missing you say? Hmm... must've escaped.

Posted: 8/25/2005 4:57:29 AM EDT

[#7]

I wonder if satellite imagery is normal for prison camps?
Or did they find it out by chance?

Posted: 8/25/2005 5:36:53 AM EDT

[#8]

We let the terrorists have floorboards and milk?

The Great Satan is just way too nice nowadays. You know, I betcha we knew they were digging and we just waited and waited to bust them after a lot of work just to piss them off.

Posted: 8/25/2005 5:41:21 AM EDT

[#9]

Yah know if they put that much effort into helping to re-build thier country, instead of into being shitbirds.......

Posted: 8/25/2005 5:44:42 AM EDT

[#10]

Picturing the Arab equivalent of Steve McQueen in a harrowing chase, ending with him trying to jump a fence to freedom on camel back.

Posted: 8/25/2005 7:01:10 AM EDT

[#11]

Quoted:
I wonder if satellite imagery is normal for prison camps?
Or did they find it out by chance?

It was a snitch.

Posted: 8/25/2005 7:07:19 AM EDT

[#12]

At what point do you start to suspect something?... 2 dozen toilets clogged with soil, I mean, come on!

Posted: 8/25/2005 7:18:24 AM EDT

[#13]

The guards knew there was a tunnel, but could not find it and the escape was only averted by a last minute stoolie? Great

Posted: 8/25/2005 7:25:15 AM EDT

[#14]

The initial response was actually worse than that.

Posted: 8/25/2005 7:27:56 AM EDT

[#15]

Quoted:
Do they have coolers like the germans?

SCHULTZ!!!!

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Iraqis foiled hours before Great Escape from US prison camp(not so great escape)

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