700 'terrorists' held, 28 die

2005-06-02 20:44

Hamza Hendawi

Baghdad - At least 700 "terrorists" have been captured and 28 killed in the first four days of a major counter-insurgency operation being carried out by United States-backed Iraqi forces in Baghdad, said an interior minister on Thursday.

Bayan Jabr said an additional 118 criminal suspects were rounded in Operation Lighting, al-Barq in Arabic, which involved 40 000 Iraqi troops.

The presence of security forces on the streets of Baghdad, a city of about six million people, had increased dramatically since the operation began on Sunday, with snap checkpoints, round-the-clock patrols by police commandos in pickup trucks and raids on suspect houses.

Jabr, a member of the supreme council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq - the country's largest Shiite party that's also known as SCIRI - said that he was determined to end any torture of terror suspects held in police custody.

10 people 'died of torture'

He added that he had already fired a police major general and a brigadier for their alleged torture of detainees and abuse of authority.

Jabr, formerly a senior official of the Badr Brigade, a militia that belonged to SCIRI said: "It's a clear message to everyone that they will loose their jobs if torture continues.

"I am a victim of torture myself, out of 16 family members killed under the regime of Saddam Hussein, 10 died of torture."

Human Rights Watch had singled out the interior ministry as the organisation mainly responsible for the torture and ill treatment of security detainees in Iraq.

In a January report, it also cited denial of access by families and lawyers to detainees, improper treatment of detained children and abysmal conditions in pre-trial detention facilities.

Except for rare instances, it said Iraqi authorities had failed to investigate and punish officials responsible for violations, and charged that foreign police advisers - primarily American nationals funded by the US - had turned a blind eye to the abuses.

US, British embassies

Jabr spoke at one of Saddam's former palaces inside the Green Zone - a large Baghdad area that housed government offices, parliament, and the US and British embassies.

He dismissed accusations that a Shiite militia, the Badr Brigade, was responsible for a recent spate of assassinations that targeted Sunni clerics.

He blamed terrorists for killing Shiite as well as Sunni clerics, saying they were doing so to foment sectarian tensions. A total of 10 clerics died over a two-week period last month.

Iraq's Shiites, about 60% of Iraq's estimated 26 million people, had long been oppressed by the Sunni Arabs, who were thought to make up from 15% to 20% of the population.

The 2003 ouster of Saddam, a Sunni, stripped the minority of its dominance about Iraqi affairs - an action that had embittered many of them and believed to be partly responsible for the Sunni-dominated insurgency.

- SAPA