Happy Bus

Nickname for the bus that transports prisoners released from Camp Bucca – a vast American detention center in southern Iraq.

Time described Camp Bucca, as a “sprawling 100-acre, open-air U.S detention center close to the Kuwaiti border, the largest in Iraq, which houses a little over 10,000 of the 13,832 detainees currently in U.S custody.” One former camp detainee reported his experience to The Times of London:

The guards would do searches in the middle of the night. They would come with their dogs and drag us from our beds, handcuff us and put us out in the open. We had to avoid eye contact with the guards or they would demand to know why we were looking at them.

We busied ourselves by reading the Koran and latterly they allowed our families to bring books. But not knowing how long we would stay was miserable. The case against us inmates was assaulting Iraqi forces, assaulting US forces, terrorising citizens, killings, kidnappings – charges that could carry 400 years in jail.

One happy moment was when my brother came to see me and brought my smallest son. The other was when I finally rode on what they call theHappy Bus to be released and go home. Once you are told you will ride the Happy Bus, that means things will be OK.

In an October 2008 article for Reuters, Peter Graff reported that prisoners at Camp Bucca were segregated into groups of “moderates” and “extremists,” and stated:

Teachers – often separated from their pupils by steel wire – offer six-week courses in Arabic literacy, English and maths. Government-vetted clerics teach four-day discussion courses on moderate Islam.

Detainees are constantly told the courses can help them go home. A hand-painted sign in English and Arabic shows classes as stops on a winding road ending with a “Happy Bus” out of Bucca.

(According to Time, Camp Bucca is due to close in July 2009.)