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Iraq: Government Death
Squads Ravaging Baghdad
By Dahr Jamail and Ali Al-Fadhily
09/05/07 "IPS News" -- - 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.
Dahr Jamail is an
independent journalist who reports from Iraq.
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