Police torture raises tensions amid Iraqi power scramble

Police torture raises tensions amid Iraqi power scramble
By LARRY KAPLOW
Cox News Service
Friday, March 25, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Once again, the mangled bodies of the dead prompted horror and shock that threatened to ignite Iraq's combustible rivalries.

But this time the outrage was not a terrorist assassination or car bombing, but — by all public accounts — torture and death doled out by the very Iraqi police meant to keep the peace.

The killing of three members of a powerful Shiite Muslim militia last month has focused new attention on abuses by the U.S.-trained and -equipped Iraqi security forces, which many say is dominated by former police officers from Saddam Hussein's regime.

Iraq's future is already imperiled by the daily violence of an anti-government insurgency. But the murder of the three men poses a new danger, accentuating factional divisions among those who have so far been peaceful contenders at the core of the budding political process.

The government, on its way out after elections two months ago, has officially denounced the killings and ordered investigations that are still ongoing while compensation is paid to the families — an unusually public response indicating the political sensitivities of the case.

The case has injected an emotional element into the jockeying for control of the post-election Iraqi government. Already, the enthusiasm of the landmark Jan. 30 elections had given way to protracted haggling over how to form the new government. A Shiite Muslim alliance won half the seats in the new parliament and is negotiating over how to form a coalition with a large Kurdish faction.

(more)

http://tinyurl.com/62zcy