Iraq charges police with torture
Published 9:00 pm Tuesday, November 7, 2006
BAGHDAD, Iraq – Shiites and Sunnis traded mortar attacks Tuesday on Baghdad neighborhoods across the Tigris, killing 21 as police found the bodies of 15 torture victims in the river south of the capital.
The violence persisted despite a move by the Interior Ministry to charge 57 members of the Shiite-dominated Iraqi police force, including a general, in the alleged torture of hundreds of detainees at a prison in east Baghdad.
In the latest round of sectarian attacks, police said two mortar shells slammed into a coffee shop in a Shiite neighborhood in north Baghdad late Tuesday, killing at least 14 people and wounding 16. The attack appeared to have been in response to mortar fire on a Sunni neighborhood across the Tigris earlier in the day that killed seven people and wounded 25.
Authorities reported finding the bullet-riddled bodies of 15 apparent death squad victims floating in the Tigris south of Baghdad, all blindfolded and bound at the wrists and ankles. The victims apparently were tortured before being shot to death. Hundreds of such killings have been recorded in the capital since the bombing of a Shiite shrine in February ignited revenge sectarian killings.
Torture is considered widespread among the poorly trained police force, which has suffered heavy losses at the hands of Sunni insurgents and criminal gangs, but Tuesday’s announcement marked the first time the government has pressed charges. Iraqi police are accused of close ties to the Shiite death squads, whose daily abductions and killings fuel sectarian violence convulsing the country.
