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Bodies of 11 Iraqi cops found
02/03/2007 21:24 - (SA)
Baghdad - Iraqi security forces found the bodies of 11 of their murdered comrades on Friday after al-Qaeda threatened to kill police hostages in revenge for the alleged rape of a Sunni woman.
Uday al-Khadran, mayor of Khalis, said: "They were found in the streets of Baquba. Their throats had been cut and their hands were bound."
Earlier, the interior ministry said it was investigating the disappearance of 14 policemen, after al-Qaeda released pictures of officers it said it had captured and was holding hostage.
General Abdel Karim Khalaf said: "The police are in the early stages of an investigation over the alleged kidnapping of 14 policemen who left Baquba to go on leave
"The relatives of these policemen made a report to the Diyala police commander that they have not reached home."
Earlier, an alliance of Sunni armed groups in Iraq, led by al-Qaeda, posted pictures on the internet of what it said were 18 kidnapped interior ministry employees from Diyala - some of them in police uniforms.
Khalaf added: "When a 100 people go on leave, you cannot say immediately how many are safe and how many are missing. We have complaints about 14 being missing."
'Alleged gang-rape'
He confirmed that some of the missing men were in uniform.
Al-Qaeda's internet statement said that men had been kidnapped in Diyala in retaliation for the alleged gang-rape by Iraqi police of a Sunni woman - known under the apparent pseudonym Sabrin al-Janabi.
The statement demands that "officers that participated in the horrible act" be turned over to the insurgents and that "all Sunni Muslims held in interior ministry prisons be released."
Al-Qaeda gave the government 24 hours to meet its demands or else hostages would be killed.
The alleged rape of Janabi has triggered a bitter row at the highest levels of the Iraqi state.
Sunni leaders, including Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, have largely given credence to her claims, which some say represent a much bigger problem of daily abuses carried out by government forces.
But Iraq's Shi'ite prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, was quick to dismiss the charges, alleging the rape was invented by Sunni politicians to tarnish the police at the launch of a large Baghdad security operation.
'Liar and criminal'
Maliki branded Janabi a liar and a criminal and ordered that the officers she accused be commended. He also sacked the head of a government agency that maintains Sunni mosques after he spoke out about the alleged assault.
Janabi's said she was raped and beaten by at least four officers after being seized in a sweep of suspected Sunni insurgent safe houses in southwest Baghdad on February 18.
She was later treated at a US military hospital in the fortified Green Zone.
US commanders have said the investigation into her allegations is a matter for the Iraqi authorities, but that they will compile any evidence they hold and give it to investigators if asked.
- AFP
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