In a government building resembling an oversize mausoleum in Baghdad, Major Charlotte Herring, a US Army lawyer, faced a nervous Iraqi lawyer, Fatima Suaad Ibrahim. A translator sat between them. Ms Ibrahim, 36, told Major Herring she lived with her parents, three brothers and their families in a house in Baghdad.

Major Herring, a single mother who has served in the army for 13 years, told her the Americans were urgently seeking Iraqi lawyers and jurists. They want to rebuild the legal system and to understand the structure of a court and prison system that remained an enigma.

Major Herring, with the staff judge advocate's office of the 3rd Infantry Division, questioned Ms Ibrahim who described an Iraqi system in which bribery was common.

She said judges had insulted her because she was a woman. She also said she had adored her job as a lawyer because it gave her a sense of freedom. She also described the system as a shadowy world where loyalty to Saddam Hussein was often a question of survival.

Ms Ibrahim said that lawyers attended two-year institutes to become judges in criminal and civil courts. Serious crimes like murder were handled by three-judge panels called the Court of Sessions.
Asked how many judges were women, Ms Ibrahim replied: "Only five or six. "That will change," Major Herring said.