Camp Bucca

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Overview

Camp Bucca was a U.S. military forward operating base and theater internment facility near Umm Qasr in Basra Province. The U.S. 800th Military Police Brigade took over the site in April 2003 and named it for Ronald Bucca, a New York City fire marshal killed in the September 11 attacks. The site had earlier held a 492-meter television mast, then the tallest structure in Iraq.

After the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, many detainees were moved to Bucca, which U.S. authorities hoped would serve as a model facility. It was repeatedly expanded between 2004 and 2008. Its population stood at about 13,800 in March 2007 and roughly 20,000 by August 2007, and in October 2007 a $110 million expansion was announced to raise capacity to 30,000. It has been described as the largest internment camp in American history.

The facility was guarded by a mix of Army military police and National Guard infantry, Air Force expeditionary security forces squadrons, and Navy provisional detainee battalions. Air Force and Army personnel manned the facility side by side, and Navy sailors drawn from aviation and other ratings received detainee operations training at Fort Bliss before deploying.

Camp Bucca was the scene of riots, escapes, detainee deaths and documented abuse. The Red Cross, Amnesty International and U.S. Army investigators all reported mistreatment over several years, and in 2008 six U.S. Navy sailors were charged over the beating of detainees and the sealing of detainees in a cell filled with pepper spray. A 9 June 2007 rocket strike on Compound 8 killed six detainees outright.

The camp held many future leaders of the Islamic State, including Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and has been described as a breeding ground for extremism where Ba'athist and Islamist detainees formed alliances. The U.S. military ended detainee operations on 17 September 2009 and handed the base to the Government of Iraq in December 2010.

Timeline

Units stationed at Camp Bucca

Units documented in public sources as based at or operating from Camp Bucca. This list is not complete; units rotated frequently and many smaller elements were never reported. Veterans can add their unit on the message board below.

Notable events and facts

• The camp was named for Ronald Bucca, the only New York City fire marshal killed in the line of duty, who died in the September 11 attacks.
• Former detainees who went on to lead the Islamic State include Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Abu Mohammed al-Adnani; Ahmed al-Sharaa, later president of Syria, was also held there.
• A 9 June 2007 rocket strike on Compound 8 killed six detainees outright and two more later died of their wounds.
• Secretary of the Navy Donald C. Winter toured the theater internment facility in November 2007.
• The Army opened training facilities modeled on Camp Bucca's internment facility at Fort Leonard Wood and Fort Leavenworth in 2006.
• A 24 February 2008 rocket attack killed an Army and Air Force Exchange Service employee and wounded several contractors.

Photographs

Message board: Camp Bucca

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Sources

1. Camp Bucca (Wikipedia). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Bucca
2. Wikimedia Commons search results for Camp Bucca (file descriptions). https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=%22Camp+Bucca%22&ns6=1