Iraq ousts 10,000 in security ministry(since June)

[maddezmom]

BAGHDAD — Iraq's Interior Ministry has fired or reassigned more than 10,000 employees, including high-ranking police, who were found to have tortured prisoners, accepted bribes or had ties to militias, a ministry spokesman has disclosed.

A soon-to-be-released internal inquiry also details 41 incidents of human rights abuse at the ministry. In one case, four members of the national police hanged prisoners from a ceiling and beat them with sticks in a ministry-run prison known as Site 4, according to the report by the ministry's inspector general.

The United States has pressured Iraq's Shiite-led government to clean up its security forces as they undertake a broad plan to reduce sectarian violence. Sunni politicians have accused Iraq's police of collaborating with Shiite death squads.

More than half of those fired or reassigned since June were found to have militia ties, Jassim Hanoon, the Interior Ministry's deputy spokesman, said in a weekend interview. The investigation is ongoing.

more: http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-03-04-security-ministry_N.htm?csp=34

Basra raid finds dozens detained by Iraq spy unit

~snip~

As recently as December, a combined force of British and Iraqi troops assaulted a police station in Basra and rescued 127 prisoners from fetid conditions. Some of the prisoners had been tortured.

The most significant recent case involved a secret Baghdad prison run by the Shiite-controlled Interior Ministry, known as Site 4 and discovered by American and Iraqi troops last year, where more than 1,400 prisoners were discovered and where some had been subjected to systematic abuse.

~snip~

The Interior Ministry, dominated by Shiites, has long been accused by Sunni Arabs of complicity in torture and killings.

It was unclear whether the Basra detainees were still in custody, and there was no further information on the of the detainees or their captors. A spokesman for the British military command in Basra, Maj. David Gell, said in a telephone interview early Monday that he could not provide any further information about them. Reuters news agency said the detainees included a woman and two children.

more: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/03/05/africa/web-0305iraq.php

[ClintonTyree]

1. And in doing so...

just created 10,000 more pissed-off insurgents hell bent on toppling the puppet regime and killing as many American soldiers as possible. Whereas they were perhaps part-time collaborators before, now they'll become full-time insurgents. The only people who haven't fled the country are those with a distinct agenda: making life as miserable as possible for our troops. And who will they get to replace these 10,000? In all likelihood, people that are even more suspect than the ones they just ousted.
The beat goes on. Mistake after mistake, all compounding the problems within Iraq. An already weak and corrupted police force about to become even weaker and more corrupt.
Freedom is on the march! :eyes:

[UpInArms]

2. those are just deadenders! this - this is

progress!

:sarcasm:

[rodeodance]

3. whow, What a mess. what a mess.

[LiberalFighter]

4. So this regime is better than Saddam