Death squads among Iraq's commandos

Iraqi police commandos are being blamed for a wave of kidnappings and executions around Baghdad since the spring. One such group, the Volcano Brigade, is operating as a death squad, say several Iraqi government officials and western Baghdad residents. On Aug. 23, men in Volcano Brigade uniforms and trucks rolled into the streets of Dolay, a mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhood of western Baghdad, residents say. "I got a call from my cousins" around the corner, said Ahmed Abu Yusuf, 33, an unemployed Sunni. "They told me to stay hidden because the Volcano were in the streets, arresting Sunnis." For three hours, the raiders burst into Sunni homes, handcuffed dozens of men and loaded them into vans. Two days later and 90 miles away, residents of the desert town of Badrah found the bodies of 36 of the men in a gully, their hands still bound and their skulls shattered by bullets. Two were the cousins who had phoned him the warning, Abu Yusuf said. The Volcano Brigade's commander, Bassem Gharawi, has denied his force committed the massacre. But Shiite and Sunni Iraqis close to the unit, some of them high-ranking security officials, said it took part–whether on its own or with the Badr militia. "No one can talk openly about the Volcanoes because we could easily be killed," said a government official. In the past year, the US military has helped build up the commandos under guidance from James Steele, a former Army Special Forces officer who led US counterinsurgency efforts in El Salvador in the 1980s. Salvadoran army units trained by Steele's team were accused of a pattern of atrocities. Execution-style massacres are now routine. In the 11 weeks since the Dolay victims were discovered in the desert, at least 17 groups of apparent Baghdad residents–158 men in all–have been found dumped in empty fields, back streets or at Baghdad's sewage plant, most shot to death with their hands tied. According to news agency and Iraqi press accounts, scores of them had last been seen alive in the hands of men in police uniforms.