US Training of Death Squads in Iraq? - War Is A Crime .org

"You've got the facilities protection service, the public order brigades, the commandos, thehighway patrol, the regular police, the traffic police, patrol officers," said a second U.S. militaryofficial."Who knows who they all are? Nobody controls them but the minister," the officer said,referring to Interior Minister Bayan Jabr.Jabr, a Shiite with close ties to the Badr Brigade, a paramilitary group, has been at the centerof allegations of abuse at the hands of Iraqi security forces. The minister's notoriety rose last yearas the bodies of hundreds of men - mostly Sunni Arabs - started appearing in sewage treatmentplants, garbage dumps and desert ravines. Most of the bodies showed signs of torture andexecution-style killings. Many families of the deceased said their kin had last been seen in theback of a police vehicle.The Shiites, who constitute about 60% of the Iraqi population, were severely repressed underSaddam Hussein's regime, which favored the Sunni minority. The Shiites came to power in thewake of the U.S.-led invasion of March 2003. A Sunni-led insurgency has carried out acampaign of bombings and assassinations against the government.Over the last two years, Shiite militias within Iraq's security forces have been accused ofstaging reprisals for the Sunni attacks. Leading Sunni figures have blamed the reprisals on Jabr.Sunni political parties have made his removal from office a key issue in negotiations overwhether they will take part in Iraq's Shiite-led government.In a recent interview, Army Maj. Gen. Joseph Peterson, who is leading the multibillion-dollareffort to train and equip Iraq's police forces, vigorously defended the minister and said he washeartened by Jabr's pledge to investigate the abuse fully."Death squads - they're a real issue," said Peterson. "I can tell you, we caught our first deathsquad," he said, referring to the unit that was apprehended last month. "The minister of Interior iselated that we caught them," he added.Peterson said U.S. and Interior Ministry officials were investigating the highway patrol squadto determine "where these guys came from and how they were organized and who was leadingthem and what was their purpose."Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a U.S. military spokesman, said that the Interior Ministry wasleading the investigation into the suspected death squad.Ali Hussein Kamal, the Interior Ministry's intelligence chief, said in an interview Sunday thatinvestigators were also trying to determine whether the Iraqi general in charge of the highwaypatrol was linked to the squad."If we find that these allegations that he is involved are true, we will be taking very firmmeasures against him," Kamal said. "But generally speaking, high-ranking officers are usuallyignorant of what their lower-ranking officers are doing."123