1,200 Iraqi cops suspended for suspected links to death squads

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraqi authorities have suspended an entire brigade of as many as 1,200 police officers for suspected connections to a mass kidnapping and murder.

The Ministry of Interior said it would recall and retrain the national police's 8th Brigade, based in the capital, after witnesses reported that men wearing police uniforms were behind the kidnapping Sunday of 26 workers at a south Baghdad meat-processing plant.

Six of the workers later were found dead. One who had been shot and left for dead crawled to a military checkpoint, authorities said.

The decommissioning comes after street protests erupted at one of the police unit's checkpoints in the capital. U.S. military officials requested that one of the unit's battalions be recalled.

"There is clear evidence that there was some complicity in allowing death-squad elements to move freely, when in fact they were supposed to be impeding their movement, that perhaps they did not respond as rapidly when reports were made," said Army Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, spokesman for the U.S.-led forces in Iraq.

He said the Iraqi government had "lost trust and confidence in the ... [brigade's] ability to serve the public due to their poor performance and alleged criminal wrongdoings."

The brigade was taken Wednesday to a training camp north of the city, Caldwell said. The police officers would be questioned and given lie-detector tests, and their criminal histories will be checked.

Brig. Gen. Abdul Kareem Khalaf, a spokesman for the Iraqi Ministry of Interior, which oversees the police, said the brigade's commander had been detained for questioning.

The decommissioning is the latest in a series of moves undertaken by Iraqi and U.S. military authorities to combat the possible infiltration by insurgents or sectarian combatants into Iraq's army and security services.

New Ministry of Health statistics released Wednesday show that 2,667 civilians died violently in September — and an additional 2,994 were injured — a level consistent with the summer's spike in violence.

A substantial number of them fell victim to death squads that pull people off sidewalks, seize them from their homes or drag them out of their cars, then take them to unknown locations. Their bodies usually are found with gunshot wounds and signs of torture.

To a growing degree, government and military officials fear the police and other security services have links to corruption and sectarian violence. Since June, the Ministry of Interior has fired 1,700 officers for possible corruption, abuse of authority or other violations, a ministry spokesman said.

In the incident Sunday at the plant in the south Baghdad neighborhood of Amil, about six men claiming to be police officers entered and asked employees for identification cards before ordering most of them into a truck and driving away.

At another location, employees were beaten and separated into Sunnis and Shiites, with the Shiites permitted to leave, according to a survivor who was interviewed by investigators from the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team.

A military source said the kidnappers asked one man, "Why are you working with these Sunnis?" before releasing him. All of the shooting victims were Sunnis.

Shell casings found at the scene of the kidnapping match handguns carried by Iraqi police but differ from those commonly used on the street, military investigators said.

Wednesday's actions came after Army Lt. Col. John Norris, commander of the 172nd Stryker Brigade's 23rd forward battalion, issued a request to decommission the first of the Iraqi brigade's three battalions.

U.S. military officials said the Ministry of Interior had opened an investigation into connections or cooperation between the brigade and death squads operating in the capital, and moved to decommission the unit after the protests and Norris' request.

"They set up checkpoints throughout the town, they run patrols throughout their area of responsibility, so the question that begs to be answered is, why were they having such a spike in murders in their area?" Norris said.

The apparent disparity, he said, raised a question: "Are they contributing to security, or are they causing the poor security conditions?"

A report for the Council on Foreign Relations last year found "widespread" infiltration of security forces by insurgents, ranging from hard-core fighters who slip through hiring checks to sympathizers who help militias and insurgents. Some police appear to help the insurgents out of intimidation and fear, the report said.

U.S. authorities who oversaw the early formation of the police forces relied on local expertise in evaluating who was suitable, according to Sharon Otterman, former associate director of the council who wrote the report.

"The other big issue is who, exactly, were they trying to keep out of the forces? At the beginning, it was more a concern of looking for former Baathists," she said. "Now what we're seeing is infiltration of every kind of group — the Shiia militias, not to mention the Sunnis, and everybody else."

Information from McClatchy Newspapers is included in this report.