WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? U.S. officials in Iraq have handed over to the Iraqi government all detainees in their custody as the Obama administration prepares to withdraw, the Pentagon said on Tuesday, with the exception of one high profile prisoner.
Lieutenant Colonel Todd Breasseale, a Pentagon spokesman, said the detainee handover had been completed as of Tuesday, with the exception of Ali Mussa Daqduq, who U.S. officials say is an operative for the Lebanese group Hezbollah.
"Since the process began a few years ago, we've been working to complete this transfer safely and securely in a way that wouldn't overburden the Iraqi system," Breasseale said.
"Mr. Daqduq remains in US custody. There are serious and ongoing deliberations about how to handle this individual in order to protect U.S. service members as well as broader US interests," he said.
The move to transfer all but one U.S. detainee to Iraqi authorities comes a little over a month before the deadline for withdrawing all U.S. troops from Iraq.
There are now around U.S. 20,000 troops left in Iraq. As commanders race to meet their deadline, only a small force of around 150 U.S. military officials, reporting to a State Department security office at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, are expected to be left on January 1.
The drawdown, laid out in a 2008 bilateral agreement, culminates more than eight years of major U.S. military presence in Iraq, where more than 4,000 U.S. soldiers have been killed since the invasion to topple Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Tens of thousands of Iraqis are believed to have been killed in the sectarian and insurgent slaughter that followed.
Daqduq is suspected by U.S. officials of orchestrating a 2007 kidnapping that resulted in the killing of five U.S. military personnel. He must be transferred to Iraqi custody by the end of this year under terms of the U.S.-Iraq security agreement.
Some U.S. lawmakers fear Iraq will be unable to hold Daqduq, who was born in Lebanon, for long. U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Obama administration would like the Iraqis to release him to U.S. custody.
Daqduq's fate is one of the remaining unanswered questions following President Barack Obama's decision to abandon efforts to secure an extended military presence in Iraq.
Violence in Iraq is a far cry from what it was at the height of the war in 2006-07, but bloodshed continues and political stability remains elusive.
If U.S. officials were able to remove Daqduq from Iraq, it's unclear where he would go. It appears highly unlikely Obama would want to add to the population at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba, which he promised but has so far failed to close.
(Reporting by Missy Ryan; editing by Todd Eastham)
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