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

homes or mosques by men in uniform regularly turn up in land fills around Baghdad,bound, gagged and bearing execution-style gunshot injuries.On the other side of the sectarian divide, there is also evidence of Shia Muslims beingsystematically massacred by Sunni extremists in Baghdad, Diyala province and mixedareas to the south of the capital.Executions are also regularly reported in the southern city of Basra, where British troopspatrol. Maj. Alex Wilson, a senior British officer involved in training police in Basra,said that he believed death squads "masquerading" as police or members of the interiorministry, were responsible for more than 140 killings between November and January.He told the Associated Press that this was double the number killed in the previous sixmonths. "We are doing our best to counter the death squads. We want to take them off thestreet," he said.Nermine Othman, the human rights minister, said that she believed lower-level interiorministry officials were using criminals to kill Iraqis."I think there are many people inside the interior ministry involved with these deaths orgiving the uniforms of colleagues to criminals," she said. "These officials are helping thecriminals by informing them on where targeted people are going or where people areliving. They are helping them in different ways."The Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party praised the investigation and said perpetrators should bebrought to justice."Since a very long time, we have been talking about such violations and we have beentelling the Interior Ministry officials that there are squads that raid houses and arrestpeople who are found later executed in different parts of the capital," said Nasser al-Aniof the Iraqi Islamic party.Source: Times (UK)127