Raid targets Basra police infiltrators

BAGHDAD, Iraq — British troops launched a crackdown Tuesday on Basra's troubled police, arresting several officers in a force long believed infiltrated by extremist Shiite militiamen.

Fourteen people were detained in the early-morning raids, British officials said. Nine were released but five others — all policemen — were jailed for alleged roles in murder and other crimes "connected to rival tribal and militia groups," British spokesman Maj. Peter Cripps said.

They include Maj. Jassim al-Daraji, assistant director of Basra's criminal-intelligence department, according to police spokesman Lt. Abbas al-Basri.

"Everyone in this part of Iraq has some allegiance or grouping with a tribe or some political group or militia," Cripps said. "The point ... is whether their allegiances are greater to the police service or their tribe or militia."

Shiite-dominated Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, is located 340 miles south of Baghdad, and has been far calmer than the turbulent Sunni Arab areas where most American troops are based. Still, 10 British soldiers have been killed since May in bombings and ambushes, some of them blamed on tribal and militia groups.

Trouble escalated last September in Basra when Iraqi police arrested two British Arabic-speaking commandos during a surveillance mission. Fearing the soldiers would be transferred to militia control, British troops stormed a police station and freed them.

Some Shiite militias are believed behind killings of Sunni Arabs, often in reprisal for attacks by insurgents and religious extremists against Shiites.

U.S. efforts to persuade Shiites and Kurds to disband their militias have proved difficult in the face of the raging Sunni insurgency. Shiite and Kurdish parties dominate the current government.

Major militias include the Badr Brigade and the Mahdi Army — both Shiite — and the peshmerga, the Kurdish force believed to number up to 100,000. Peshmerga troops fought alongside the U.S. military in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and veterans of the Kurdish force are strongly represented in the new Iraqi army and police.

Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has refused to disband his Mahdi Army, which battled U.S. forces in two uprisings. Despite an agreement last year to end the fighting, the Mahdi Army still operates in parts of Baghdad and Shiite areas of the south, including Basra.

The Badr Organization for Reconstruction and Development, formerly the Badr Brigade, maintains that it is no longer a militia. The group is linked to Iraq's biggest Shiite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq — senior partner in the Shiite coalition that won the biggest number of parliament seats in last month's election.

Badr is also widely believed to have links to Iranian intelligence, and many of its key figures lived in Iran until the fall of Saddam Hussein in March 2003. Badr veterans are believed represented in ranks of the Interior Ministry special commando forces at the center of Sunni abuse charges.

However, those units, especially the feared Wolf Brigade, are considered among the toughest fighters among government forces in the battle against insurgents.

Saddam trial delayed

before it can restart

After a monthlong recess, Saddam Hussein's trial was supposed to resume Tuesday in Baghdad, but it was abruptly postponed until Sunday as judges argued over who should lead the court.

The five-member tribunal trying the case has been in turmoil since Jan. 15, when the chief judge, Rizgar Mohammed Amin, resigned amid complaints from Iraqi politicians that he had failed to control Saddam during the proceedings. On Monday, the jurist named to replace Amin was suddenly removed, and Raouf Rasheed Abdel-Rahman was brought in to serve as chief judge.

But Abdel-Rahman has not been among the judges trying the case since it began Oct. 19, raising questions about his ability to manage the trial. Saddam's lawyers quickly latched onto the confusion, arguing it proves that the tribunal is under political pressure and cannot provide Saddam with a fair trial.

Saddam, a Sunni Muslim, and his co-defendants are accused of killing almost 150 people after the 1982 attempted assassination of the former dictator in Dujail, a predominantly Shiite Muslim city. If convicted, the defendants could be sentenced to death.

Also

Attacks up: The U.S. military reported Monday that insurgents mounted more than 34,000 attacks last year on U.S. and other foreign troops, Iraqi security forces and Iraqi civilians, a nearly 30 percent jump from 2004, according to the Reuters news service.

Women in custody: Lt. Col. Guy Rudisill, a spokesman for detainee affairs, said the cases of some of the women now in U.S. custody in Iraq would be presented to review boards. Insurgents have demanded the release of all detained women in Iraq as a condition for freeing Jill Carroll, an American freelance reporter abducted Jan. 7. At least eight women are said to be in U.S. custody.

Troop level cut: The United States has cut its force in Iraq to 136,000, the lowest since last summer, as it draws down from about 160,000 troops in the country for last month's elections, the Pentagon said Tuesday. There also are about 20,000 British and other foreign troops in Iraq and about 227,000 U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces fighting the insurgency, the Pentagon said.