Death Squads Target the Iraqi Next Door

[ECH1969]

On that scorching afternoon last month, Ahmed Kamel was playing soccer with his two children outside his home here when three men drove up in a Chevy Caprice, pulled out their guns and dragged him away.

"You will see your father tomorrow behind the levee," one advised Kamel's 13-year-old, Mustafa, as the boy clung desperately to the escaping car. A wrong turn, a detour, an untoward stare, a pointed finger, an anonymous denunciation, a nod of the head — these can, and do, lead regularly to death.

"They say this is God's will, but this is not God's will," said Nisreen Yaseri, mourning the killing last week of her cousin Mohammed Jabbar, 26. "This is people's will. It's not about God."

When men in fatigues arrested Feraz Abbas Kubais, a Sunni electrician, at his home, his cousin placed a telephone call. The cousin knew someone close to the Badr Brigade. "I'll see what I can do," the cousin was told, a friend recalled. Two hours later, the Badr man called back. "I'm sorry, it's too late," the cousin was told. "You'll find him in the morgue."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-bodies18sep18,1,432588.story?page=1&cset=true&ctrack=1&coll=la-headlines-world

[ECH1969]

1. BTTT

[madokie]

2. right out of negropointe's playbook. death squads