Govt.
Death Squads
Ravaging Baghdad
By Ali Al-Fadhily
& Dahr Jamail
21 October, 2006
Inter
Press Service
BAGHDAD, Oct 19 (IPS)
- Death squads from the Ministry of Interior posing as Iraqi police
are killing more people than ever in the capital, emerging evidence
shows.
The death toll is high -
in all 1,536 bodies were brought to the Baghdad morgue in September.
The health ministry announced last month that it will build two new
morgues in Baghdad to take their capacity to 250 bodies a day.
Many fear a government hand
in more killings to come. The U.S. military has revealed that the 8th
Iraqi Police Unit was responsible for the Oct. 1 kidnapping of 26 Sunni
food factory workers in the Amil quarter in southwest Baghdad. The bodies
of ten of them were later found in Abu Chir neighbourhood in the capital.
Minister for the Interior
Jawad al-Bolani announced he is suspending the police unit from official
duties, and confining it to base until an investigation is completed.
But sections of the ministry
appear responsible for the abductions and killing. Ministry of Interior
vehicles were used for the kidnapping in this case, and most men conducting
the raid wore Iraqi police uniforms, except for a few who wore black
death squad 'uniforms', witnesses told IPS.
The leader of the police
unit is under house arrest and faces interrogation for this and other
crimes, according to an official announcement.
"It is for sure that
they did it," one of the victim's neighbours told IPS on condition
of anonymity. "The tortured bodies were found the second day. They
came in their official police cars; it is not the first time that they
did something like this. They do it all over Baghdad, and we hope they
will get proper punishment this time."
Men of the police unit meanwhile
do not face imminent punishment. "They are going to be rehabilitated
and brought back to service," director-general of the Iraqi police
Adnan Thabit told IPS.
The Iraqi Islamic Party,
the largest Sunni party, blamed militias with ties to the government
and the U.S. military.
"The Iraqi Islamic Party
asks how could 26 people, women among them, have been transported from
Amil to Abu Chir through all those Iraqi and U.S. army checkpoints and
patrols," it said in a statement.
The U.S. military has denied
any involvement in the killings.
General Yassin al-Dulaimi,
deputy minister for the interior, has said on Iraqi television several
times that death squads are composed mainly of Iraqi police and army
units. His comments reflect differing allegiance and agendas even within
the Shia bloc.
General Dulaimi has been
trying for long to expose the organised criminal gangs that have been
controlling the ministry since its formation - a formation that was
overseen by U.S. authorities.
Dulaimi says he does not
believe that the Shia Badr organisation, a large, well-armed and funded
militia, has complete control over his ministry. But most residents
of Baghdad believe that Badr has complete control over the Baghdad Order
Maintenance police force, and use this force to carry out sectarian
murders. This force is one of several official security teams in Baghdad.
The force is led by Mehdi
al-Gharrawi, who also led similar security units during the U.S.- led
attack on Fallujah in November 2004.
"All criminals who survived
the Fallujah crisis after committing genocide and other war crimes were
granted higher ranks," Major Amir Jassim from the ministry of defence
told IPS. "I and many of my colleagues were not rewarded because
we disobeyed orders to set fire to people's houses (in Fallujah) after
others looted them."
Jassim said the looting and
burning of homes in Fallujah during the November siege was ordered from
the ministries of interior and defence.
"Now they want to do
the same things they did in Fallujah in all Sunni areas so that they
ignite a civil war in Iraq," said Jassim, referring to the Shia-dominated
ministries. "A civil war is the only guarantee for them to stay
in power, looting such incredible amounts of money."
Another official with the
ministry of defence, Muntather al-Samarraii, told IPS that both Iran
and "collaborators" within the Ministry of Interior are to
blame for the widespread sectarian killings..
"I have lists of thousands
of corruption cases from within my ministry, and other files to expose
to the world," he said, "But the world is not listening. When
it does, I am afraid it is going to be too late."
A police officer in Samarraii's
office, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS that he believed
that murderers would not be punished for their crimes.
"They will reward them,
believe me, and give them higher ranks," he said. "This is
a country that will never stand back on its feet as long as these killers
are in power. And the Americans are supporting them by allowing their
convoys to move during curfew hours."
While there is little evidence
of direct U.S. involvement, questions have arisen over what the U.S.
forces have done - or not done - to encourage such killings.
A UN human rights report
released September last year held interior ministry forces responsible
for an organised campaign of detentions, torture and killings. It reported
that special police commando units accused of carrying out the killings
were recruited from Shia Badr and Mehdi militias, and trained by U.S.
forces.
Retired Col. James Steele,
who served as advisor on Iraqi security forces to then U.S. Ambassador
John Negroponte supervised the training of these forces.
Steele was commander of the
U.S. military advisor group in El Salvador 1984-86, while Negroponte
was U.S. ambassador to nearby Honduras 1981-85. Negroponte was accused
of widespread human rights violations by the Honduras Commission on
Human Rights in 1994. The Commission reported the torture and disappearance
of at least 184 political workers.
The violations Negroponte
oversaw in Honduras were carried out by operatives trained by the CIA,
according to a CIA working group set up in 1996 to look into the U.S.
role in Honduras.
The CIA records document
that his "special intelligence units," better known as "death
squads," comprised CIA-trained Honduran armed units which kidnapped,
tortured and killed thousands of people suspected of supporting leftist
guerrillas.
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