(State Dept )U.S. Examining Reports of Abuses in Iraq (Kurdish areas)

[maddezmom]

By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer
52 minutes ago



WASHINGTON - The State Department is investigating "serious and credible" reports that minorities in Kurdish-held areas of northern Iraq have been wrongly arrested and detained, spokesman Sean McCormack said Wednesday.

The U.S. government has conveyed its insistence on the rule of law and its support for minority rights to Iraqi security authorities, McCormack said.

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that police and security forces led by Kurdish political parties, and backed by the U.S. military, abducted hundreds of minority Arabs and Turkmens in Kurdish areas. The newspaper said the abductions began more than a year ago and accelerated after the Jan. 30 election.

McCormack declined to identify the Kurds as being responsible for the abductions, or the Turkmens and Arabs as victims. "I don't want to single out anybody," the spokesman said.

~snip~
more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050615/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_iraq;_

edited to add earlier thread:

WP: Kurdish Officials Sanction Abductions in Kirkuk (bad, bad news)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1549416

[Roland99]

1. What?! No way! Obviously just "a few bad apples" "letting off some steam"

Although, in this case, I wonder how much was actually conducted by Kurds against Turkomen.

[RalphReedsWreckedEm]

2. What about the Kurds who beheaded our citizens?

Yeah, that's it....and how about the Kurds who blew up the World Trade Center in New York on 9/11? And how about the Taliban Kurds who raped women in Afghanistan while they ruled with an Iron fist? And how about the Kurds who cut you off in traffic on your way to work? And what about the Kurds who farted on the elevator, and those Kurds who forgot to wash their hands after they took a leak?

We never hear about those Kurds, do we - the liberal media only tells us about the Kurds who had fraternity pranks played on them by a few bad apples....

[AFSCME girl]

3. Hello...

goodbye!

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. Huh?

What on earth are you trying to say? I can't make sense of that as satire, a rant, or something sincerely meant.

[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

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[FreeStateDemocrat]

4. WP: Kurdish Officials Sanction Abductions in Kirkuk

U.S. Memo Says Arabs, Turkmens Secretly Sent to the North
By Steve Fainaru and Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, June 15, 2005; Page A01
KIRKUK, Iraq -- Police and security units, forces led by Kurdish political parties and backed by the U.S. military, have abducted hundreds of minority Arabs and Turkmens in this intensely volatile city and spirited them to prisons in Kurdish-held northern Iraq, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials, government documents and families of the victims.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/14/AR2005061401828.html?sub=AR