Evidence of hundreds of Sunnis executed in Iraq

On Nov. 26, when former Iraqi leader Iyad Allawi charged that human rights abuses in the country were as bad, or worse, now compared with Saddam Hussein's reign, current officials denied the charge. Now troubling new stories have emerged from the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Knight Ridder. In a following New York Times article, Dexter Filkins, the longtime Baghdad correspondent, reports that "evidence has begun to mount suggesting that the Iraqi forces are carrying out executions in predominantly Sunni neighborhoods. "Hundreds of accounts of killings and abductions have emerged in recent weeks, most of them brought forward by Sunni civilians, who claim that their relatives have been taken away by Iraqi men in uniform without warrant or explanation." Filkins reports Sunnis found dead in ditches with obvious signs of torture; others discovered in prison with similar signs. Bayan Jabr, the interior minister, denounced this evidence as "only rumors" and "nonsense." But Filkins notes: "Many of the claims of killings and abductions have been substantiated by at least one human rights organization working here–which asked not to be identified because of safety concerns–and documented by Sunni leaders working in their communities. "American officials, who are overseeing the training of the Iraqi Army and the police, acknowledge that police officers and Iraqi soldiers, and the militias with which they are associated, may indeed be carrying out killings and abductions in Sunni communities, without direct US knowledge. "But they also say it is difficult, in an already murky guerrilla war, to determine exactly who is responsible. The US officials insisted on anonymity because they were working closely with the Iraqi government and did not want to criticize it publicly." One Sunni group taking testimony from families said it had documented the deaths or disappearance of 700 civilians in the past four months. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times' Solomon Moore reported that based on 40 interviews, Shiite Muslim militia members have infiltrated Iraq's police force "and are carrying out sectarian killings under the color of law, according to documents and scores of interviews. "The abuses raise the specter of organized retaliation to attacks by Sunni-led insurgents that have killed thousands of Shiites, who endured decades of subjugation under Saddam Hussein.... "In recent months, hundreds of bodies have been discovered in rivers, garbage dumps, sewage treatment facilities and alongside roads and in desert ravines. Many of them are thought to be victims of Sunni insurgents, who are known to target Shiite civilians and Iraqi security forces, and even Sunni Arabs believed to be collaborating with US forces or the Iraqi government. But increasingly, the Shiite militias operating within the national police force are also suspected of committing atrocities. "The Baghdad morgue reports that dozens of bodies arrive at the same time on a weekly basis, including scores of corpses with wrists bound by police handcuffs. "Over several months, the Muslim Scholars Association, a Sunni organization, has compiled a library of grisly autopsy photos, lists of hundreds of missing and dead Sunnis and electronic recordings of testimonies by people who say they witnessed abuses by police officers affiliated with Shiite militias. "US officials have long been concerned about extrajudicial killings in Iraq, but until recently they have refrained from calling violent elements within the police force "death squads"–a loaded term that conjures up the US-backed paramilitaries that killed thousands of civilians during the Latin American civil wars of the 1970s and 1980s. "But US military advisors in Iraq say the term is apt, and the Interior Ministry's inspector general concurs that extrajudicial killings are being carried out by ministry forces." Recently, Leila Fadel, writing from Knight Ridder's Baghdad bureau (which first reported on the situation back in June), revealed, "Iraqi authorities have been torturing and abusing prisoners in jails across the country, current and former Iraqi officials charged. "Deputy Human Rights Minister Aida Ussayran and Gen. Muntadhar Muhi al-Samaraee, a former head of special forces at the Ministry of the Interior, made the allegations two weeks after 169 men who apparently had been tortured were discovered in a south-central Baghdad building run by the Interior Ministry. The men reportedly had been beaten with leather belts and steel rods, crammed into tiny rooms with tens of others and forced to sit in their own excrement. "A senior American military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, said he suspected that the abuse wasn't isolated to the [Baghdad] jail the US military discovered. "Ussayran said abuse was taking place across the country."