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JAG Officer Visits Iraqi Court

Jul- 1-2006 » Filed Under: 172nd SBCT

Written by Spc. Rich Vogt

SINJAR, Iraq (June 14, 2006) -- A JAG officer’s job is never done. Capt. Annemarie Drazenovich, a brigade judge advocate with the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, is getting ready to end her deployment but is still working on projects that will continue after she has left the Middle East.

“We provide full-spectrum legal support to the brigade,” she said while on a trip to remote Sinjar Province in order to assess a courthouse there. “From assessing courthouses to helping individual Soldiers with legal matters, we are here to help.”

During her trip, she stopped at Army bases to help Soldiers with their legal matters. That day, she helped Soldiers complete power-of-attorney forms so that when their friends from with the brigade return to Alaska they will be able to get their buddies’ household goods out of mini-storage for them.

“Sinjar sounds like a relatively small community, relatively safe,” Drazenovich said. “The security situation is not bad. They do think that the police should get more training. But because they’re not bombarded with criminal activity, it’s not something that’s crushing them and they’re still able to handle their workload.”

The judge told Drazenovich that he had only held three investigative hearings in the first half of the month. After the judge hears a case, the case goes to Mosul or Baghdad to be decided. Both cities have a backlog of cases. Drazenovich was interested to see how the legal system is operating and if she could find any ways to make it more efficient..

“All of the judges I’ve met have been very helpful,” she said. She asked about the investigative team and how it works. The Iraqi court system is based on the French judicial system where the judge leads an investigation. A case is only as strong as the evidence that investigators bring to the court, so their skills must be strong.

“[The judges] are interested and able to teach the police about investigating and improving their skills,” she said. “They don’t seem to need a whole lot. They’re functioning, they’re doing it, there’s just not a whole lot to do. I have found that at all the courthouses. They’re all functioning. They never stopped functioning [because of the war]. Sometimes they need more space, or they need more people.”

“The people in the courthouse are always there, professionally dressed in Western-style clothes and ready for business,” she said.

One thing she did see was that the courthouse needed a generator and some air-conditioning. The day she visited it was almost 100 degrees.

“Sometimes they are a little quiet,” she said. “They’re a little unsure of what we’re doing. They’re cautious. What has surprised me with every judge that I’ve met, because I’m very aware that I’m a woman, and going in with all men and [the judges] are all men, except for the very few women who work there, they’ve all been very polite, very friendly,”


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