Iraqi Police Unit Linked to Militias

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
Media: The Associated Press
Byline: By DAVID RISING
Date: 04 October 2006


BAGHDAD, Iraq_Iraqi authorities have taken a police brigade out of service
and returned them to training because of "complicity" with death squads in
the wake of a mass kidnapping in Baghdad this week, a U.S. military
spokesman said Wednesday.

The kidnapping took place on Sunday, when gunmen stormed into a frozen meats
factory in the Amil district and snatched 24 workers, shooting two others.
The bodies of seven of the workers were found later but the fate of the
others remains unknown.

Sunni leaders blamed Shiite militias and suggested security forces had
turned a blind eye to the attack.

The top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, said
the Iraqi police brigade in the area had been ordered to stand down and was
undergoing re-training.

"There was some possible complicity in allowing death squad elements to move
freely when they should have been impeding them," he told a Baghdad press
conference.

"The forces in the unit have not put their full allegiance to the government
of Iraq and gave their allegiance to others," he said.

The suspended brigade has about 650-700 policemen, Interior Ministry
spokesman Lt. Col. Karim Mohammedawi said.

The Iraqi Interior Ministry said Tuesday that the commander of the unit, a
lieutenant colonel, had been detained and was being investigated, and that
the major general who commands the battalion that includes the suspended
brigade has been suspended temporarily and ordered transferred.

Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, the chief ministry spokesman, said a random
selection of troops in the suspended unit were being investigated for ties
to militias.
 
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