Iraqi Security Forces Part of Death Squads

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

By Kim Murphy and Doug Smith
Los Angeles Times


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.


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