NYT: 10 Sunnis Suffocate in Iraqi Police Custody

[DeepModem Mom]

10 Sunnis Suffocate in Iraqi Police Custody
By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: July 13, 2005


BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 12 - Iraq's widely feared police commandos were struggling on Tuesday to explain how at least 10 Sunni Arab men and youths, one only 17, suffocated after a commando unit seized them from a hospital emergency ward and locked them in a police van in summer temperatures exceeding 110 degrees.

As relatives collected the bodies from Baghdad's main morgue and drove them to a village near Abu Ghraib for burial, Interior Minister Bayan Jabr was meeting with two police generals who run the commando units, preparing for a government statement that Mr. Jabr's office said would be made Wednesday.

One of the officers, Brig. Gen. Rashid Flaieh, acknowledged in a telephone interview that the victims suffocated inside what he described as "an armored van." But he denied accounts by one survivor that the victims had been kept in the van for more than 12 hours, saying it was "only two hours." He also rejected assertions by doctors who examined the bodies that the victims, in addition to suffocation, had been subjected to torture with electric shocks....

***

For the commandos, many of them veterans of Saddam Hussein's army, police and intelligence units, the incident was the latest in a long series of incidents in which they have been accused of using brutal techniques learned during Mr. Hussein's years of terror. Doctors who witnessed the victims being dragged from the hospital ward identified the government men as members of the notorious First Brigade of the commandos, but General Flaieh said that the unit involved was a separate police paramilitary force known as the Special Security Force.

What was certain was that the deaths provided a new flashpoint in relations between the American-backed transitional government, in office for 10 weeks, and the country's Sunni Arab minority, which is already angry and frustrated over the transfer of power to the Shiite majority that the new government represents. Charges of abuse by the police commandos have been one of many obstacles the new government has faced in attempting to draw Sunni Arab groups into the process of writing a new constitution and preparing for fresh elections in December. The commandos have some Sunni commanders, but most of the rank and file is Shiite....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/13/international/middleeast/13commandos.html?hp&ex=1121227200&en=fcca0e331130979e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[BeyondGeography]

1. This is a damaged country

<For the commandos, many of them veterans of Saddam Hussein's army, police and intelligence units, the incident was the latest in a long series of incidents in which they have been accused of using brutal techniques learned during Mr. Hussein's years of terror.>

Our fearless leader may have done well to take these legacy issues into account when before he embarked on this hopeless enterprise. But that would have required a certain curiosity about the world and a respect for history

[Pirate Smile]

2. It could be just like the horrifying stories we see throughout the summer

of babies or toddlers left or forgotten in cars who die from the heat.

The temperature inside the van is much, much higher then the temp. outside and if it is 110 degrees outside - they could easily be dead in 2 hours from the heat.