Sunnis allege abuse by Iraqi forces (11 tortured,executed incl 1 cleric)

[Monkie]

Multiple sources BBC, Al-Jazeera, and the AFP via khaleej times (UAE)

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/892FA1C6-5F4E-4AA7-AD89-1E6B5F6A83B4.htm

"Two major Sunni organisations - the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS) and the government's Sunni Endowment - said bodies of 11 Sunni men were found on Wednesday hours after they were taken by Iraqi security forces in early morning raids.

The dead included Sunni cleric Dia Muhammad al-Janabi, a member of the AMS. A colleague, Shaikh Hassan Sabri Salman, said al-Janabi had been taken to a house in a Shia neighbourhood "where they were tortured before being executed".

Adnan al-Dulaimi, head of the state-run Sunni Endowment, which takes care of Sunni mosques in Iraq, stopped short of blaming state security forces but said the Sunnis were taken away by armed men "in military uniform".
~snip~
The newspaper did not publish those photographs, but said the allegations included burning, strangulation, sexual abuse, hanging by the arms, the breaking of limbs and, in one case, the use of an electric drill on knee caps."

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/focusoniraq/2005/July/focusoniraq_July66.xml§ion=focusoniraq&col=

"Eleven Sunnis shot execution-style in Baghdad

BAGHDAD - The tortured bodies of 11 Sunni Arabs, shot execution-style with a bullet to the back of the head, have been discovered in Baghdad after they were arrested by police commandos, an official for the Waqf Sunni religious organisation said on Wednesday.

The 11, including an imam prayer leader, were arrested in a police commando raid in the early hours of Sunday in a northern district of Baghdad, according to the official who asked not to be identified.

Their bodies were found dumped in the north of the city on Tuesday, he added. There was no immediate reaction from the police.

“The bodies all bore torture marks and bullet wounds to the back of the head,” the official said."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4680295.stm

"Iraq's government is investigating claims that at least 11 Sunni men have been tortured and killed by police."



Iraqi man cries as he mourns at the funeral
At a loss to explain how i feel or editorialise so the picture of the man crying will have to speak for me..

[Auntie Bush]

1. Oh what a sad, sad world we live in!

No other animal on earth does to it's own species what we do to each orher. I can't believe we have brought so much pain an suffering to our fellow human beings ...all in the name of someone's God.

Thank you george bush for bring all this freedom to our world. (Freedom to kill and torture) The horrible thing is that this is just the beginning of an unending situation.

Watch out, take cover...Freedom is on the march!!!!

[mom cat]

2. Death Squads in Iraq...equipped and paid for by US, UK

Posted on Mon, Jun. 27, 2005



Sunni men in Baghdad targeted by attackers in police uniforms

By Tom Lasseter and Yasser Salihee

Knight Ridder Newspapers



BAGHDAD, Iraq - Days after Iraq's new Shiite-led government was announced on April 28, the bodies of Sunni Muslim men began turning up at the capital's central morgue after the men had been detained by people wearing Iraqi police uniforms.


Faik Baqr, the director and chief forensic investigator at the central Baghdad morgue, said the corpses first caught his attention because the men appeared to have been killed in methodical fashion. Their hands had been tied or handcuffed behind their backs, their eyes were blindfolded and they appeared to have been tortured. In most cases, the dead men looked as if they'd been whipped with a cord, subjected to electric shocks or beaten with a blunt object and shot to death, often with single bullets to their heads.


Marks on the bodies were similar to the injuries found on prisoners who were rescued from secret Interior Ministry jails by representatives of the Iraqi ministry for human rights, according to family accounts and medical records.


Iraqi and American officials said the murders aren't being investigated systematically, but in dozens of interviews with families and Iraqi officials, and a review of medical records, a Knight Ridder reporter and two special correspondents found more than 30 examples of this type of killing in less than a week. They include 12 cases with specific dates, times, names and witnesses who said they might come forward if asked by law enforcement.

more at:
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/special_packages/iraq/11999387.htm

[soup]

3. police commando?

What the heck is a police commando? Been seeing that term recently. Is it some sort of S.W.A.T. team?

What a mess, what a freaking mess.

[Monkie]

4. read: Saddam's old murderers&private militias in shiny new uniforms n/t

[lumpy]

5. Saddam was the Baathist party leader,

mainly an organization made up of Sunnis. Shiites are a more regressive order of Islam religion. Sunnis have a more secular progressive outlook; at least that was Saddam's course to modernize Iraq. Of course that might have changed since Bush's invasion.