NYT: Iraq Stumbling in Bid to Purge Its Rogue Police

[Pirate Smile]

Iraq Stumbling in Bid to Purge Its Rogue Police


Members of an elite police unit under the Interior Ministry’s jurisdiction directed vehicles at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Baghdad Saturday.

By EDWARD WONG and PAUL von ZIELBAUER
Published: September 17, 2006

BAGHDAD, Sept. 16 — Shiite militiamen and criminals entrenched throughout Iraq’s police and internal security forces are blocking recent efforts by some Iraqi leaders and the American military to root them out, a step critical to winning the trust of skeptical Sunni Arabs and quelling the sectarian conflict, Iraqi and Western officials say.

The new interior minister, Jawad al-Bolani, who oversees the police, lacks the political support to purge many of the worst offenders, including senior managers who tolerated or encouraged the infiltration of Shiite militias into the police under the previous government, according to interviews with more than a dozen officials who work with the ministry and the police.

-snip-
The ministry recently discovered that more than 1,200 policemen and other employees had been convicted years ago of murder, rape and other violent crimes, said a Western diplomat who has close contact with the ministry. Some were even on death row. Few have been fired.

-snip-
There is little accountability. The government has stopped allowing joint Iraqi and American teams to inspect Iraqi prisons. No senior ministry officials have been prosecuted on charges of detainee mistreatment, in spite of fresh discoveries of abuse and torture, including a little-reported case involving children packed into a prison of more than 1,400 inmates. Internal investigations into secret prisons, corruption and other potential criminal activity are often blocked.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/world/middleeast/17ministry.html?hp&ex=1158465600&en=c78ceefe4b6181aa&ei=5094&partner=homepage

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1. duplicate

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2514875