Baghdad, February 17, 2006


The United States military announced yesterday that it had captured an Iraqi police "death squad".

It was the first time one of the uniformed Shia Muslim groups that Sunni Arabs claim have killed hundreds in recent months has been identified in public.

Twenty-two highway police officers, wearing police commando uniforms, were held in late January at an Iraqi army checkpoint in north Baghdad.

When asked where they were going, they answered that they were taking away a Sunni man to shoot him.

"The amazing thing is they tell you exactly what they're going to do," said Maj Gen Joseph Peterson, the head of police training. "We have found one of the death squads. They are part of the police force."

Bodies of Iraqis, many bound and gagged, have been turning up in Baghdad for months. Twelve were found yesterday in the Shula suburb, all handcuffed, shot in the head and dumped at a roadside.

Sunnis have blamed many of the murders on death squads operated by the security forces, with witnesses providing testimony of uniformed men taking people from Sunni households. But previously there has been no independent proof to substantiate their reports of extra-judicial killings.

The Iraqi government immediately announced an investigation into the actions of the arrested men, four of whom were being held at Abu Ghraib prison last night. The other 18 were at an Iraqi jail.

To complicate matters, the four men at Abu Ghraib were named as members of the Badr Brigade, the armed militia of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Shia political party that heads the interior ministry and will conduct the inquiry.

Narmin Uthman, the human rights minister, said she believed that lower government officials were helping the armed groups operate. "These officials are helping the criminals by informing them on where targeted people are going or where people are living," she said.

The Iraqi Islamic Party, the largest Sunni party, said the investigation should have been launched months earlier.

In Basra, a British officer warned that similar squads were responsible for 140 murders over the past three months, more than double the number killed between May and November.

Major Alex Wilson said these killings were carried out by "men masquerading as Iraqi policemen or members of the former department of internal affairs ".