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

Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, announced yesterday a four-point plan that includedthe establishment of neighbourhood committees who would be able to report on suspiciousactivities by the security forces and local militias.The disgraced brigade will be sent for re-training by American forces, although one US trainersaid the training programme had been scheduled months ago as part of a sweeping overhaul ofIraq’s police forces, who were hastily recruited after the 2003 invasion and which havefrequently proved inadequate to the task of eradicating violence.In late 2004, almost the entire police force in the northern city of Mosul fled their bases wheninsurgents attacked, while Shia policemen in Najaf joined rebels from the Mahdi Army militiaand gave them their weapons when they took over the shrine city earlier that year.Since those major setbacks, US forces have been re-training the Iraqi police, but the programmehas had little impact.A survivor of Monday’s mass kidnapping in a parade of computer shops near Baghdad’sTechnology University described how half a dozen vehicles, with official security forcesmarkings on them, pulled up and men in military fatigues rounded up all the Sunnis in the shops.They drove off with 14 people but stopped two shops short of his establishment, he said.The bodies of several of those abducted from a meat processing plant on Sunday later showingsigns of torture. Hundreds of Sunni residents from the area later demonstrated near the factorycarrying banners that read "Get police troops out of our area."178