Despite recent scathing critiques of the performance of the U.S. press
in the run up to war by outlets like the Columbia Journalism Review
("The Lies We Bought") and the New York Review of Books ("Now They
Tell Us," and "Unfit to Print"), it would be naive to actually believe
America's press is soon likely going to start acting like the
government watchdog the founding fathers envisioned.
There were lots of stories calling into question the Administration's
lies about the pressing need for war. But you didn't hear very much
about them in the U.S. press because of the servility of the media. To
find those stories one had to wander the web and read the foreign
press, a much freer press than we have here at home.
Case in point: the Sydney Morning Herald is today re****ting a story
about the thug the U.S. put in power in Iraq. The story isn't likely
to get much coverage in the USA. The reason? The information would
embarrass the Bush administration, and the press has been thoroughly
conditioned to heed the administration's warning to 'Watch what it
says.'
Gary
Published on Saturday, July 17, 2004 by the Sydney Morning Herald
(Australia)
Allawi Shot Inmates in Cold Blood, Say Witnesses
by Paul McGeough, Chief Herald Correspondent, in Baghdad
Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, pulled a pistol and
executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police
station, just days before Wa****ngton handed control of the country to
his interim government, according to two people who allege they
witnessed the killings.
They say the prisoners - handcuffed and blindfolded - were lined up
against a wall in a courtyard adjacent to the maximum-security cell
block in which they were held at the Al-Amariyah security center, in
the city's south-western suburbs.
They say Dr Allawi told onlookers the victims had each killed as many
as 50 Iraqis and they "deserved worse than death".
The Prime Minister's office has denied the entirety of the witness
accounts in a written statement to the Herald, saying Dr Allawi had
never visited the center and he did not carry a gun.
But the informants told the Herald that Dr Allawi shot each young man
in the head as about a dozen Iraqi policemen and four Americans from
the Prime Minister's personal security team watched in stunned
silence.
Iraq's Interior Minister, Falah al-Naqib, is said to have looked on
and congratulated him when the job was done. Mr al-Naqib's office has
issued a verbal denial.
The names of three of the alleged victims have been obtained by the
Herald.
One of the witnesses claimed that before killing the prisoners Dr
Allawi had told those around him that he wanted to send a clear
message to the police on how to deal with insurgents.
"The prisoners were against the wall and we were standing in the
courtyard when the Interior Minister said that he would like to kill
them all on the spot. Allawi said that they deserved worse than death
- but then he pulled the pistol from his belt and started shooting
them."
Re-enacting the killings, one witness stood three to four meters in
front of a wall and swung his outstretched arm in an even arc, left to
right, jerking his wrist to mimic the recoil as each bullet was fired.
Then he raised a hand to his brow, saying: "He was very close. Each
was shot in the head."
The witnesses said seven prisoners had been brought out to the
courtyard, but the last man in the line was only wounded - in the
neck, said one witness; in the chest, said the other.
Given Dr Allawi's role as the leader of the US experiment in planting
a model democracy in the Middle East, allegations of a return to the
cold-blooded tactics of his predecessor are likely to stir a simmering
debate on how well Wa****ngton knows its man in Baghdad, and precisely
what he envisages for the new Iraq.
There is much debate and rumor in Baghdad about the Prime Minister's
capacity for brutality, but this is the first time eyewitness accounts
have been obtained.
A former CIA officer, Vincent Cannisatraro, recently told The New
Yorker: "If you're asking me if Allawi has blood on his hands from his
days in London, the answer is yes, he does. He was a paid Mukhabarat
[intelligence] agent for the Iraqis, and he was involved in dirty
stuff."
In Baghdad, varying accounts of the shootings are interpreted by
observers as useful to a little-known politician who, after 33 years
in exile, needs to prove his leader****p credentials as a "strongman"
in a war-ravaged country that has no experience of democracy.
Dr Allawi's statement dismissed the allegations as rumors instigated
by enemies of his interim government.
But in a sharp reminder of the Iraqi hunger for security above all
else, the witnesses did not perceive themselves as whistle-blowers. In
interviews with the Herald they were enthusiastic about such killings,
with one of them arguing: "These criminals were terrorists. They are
the ones who plant the bombs."
Before the shootings, the 58-year-old Prime Minister is said to have
told the policemen they must have courage in their work and that he
would ****eld them from any repercussions if they killed insurgents in
the course of their duty.
The witnesses said the Iraqi police observers were "shocked and
surprised". But asked what message they might take from such an act,
one said: "Any terrorists in Iraq should have the same destiny. This
is the new Iraq.
"Allawi wanted to send a message to his policemen and soldiers not to
be scared if they kill anyone - especially, they are not to worry
about tribal revenge. He said there would be an order from him and the
Interior Ministry that all would be fully protected.
"He told them: 'We must destroy anyone who wants to destroy Iraq and
kill our people.'
"At first they were surprised. I was scared - but now the police seem
to be very happy about this. There was no anger at all, because so
many policemen have been killed by these criminals."
Dr Allawi had made a surprise visit to the complex, they said.
Neither witness could give a specific date for the killings. But their
accounts narrowed the time frame to on or around the third weekend in
June - about a week before the rushed handover of power in Iraq and
more than three weeks after Dr Allawi was named as the interim Prime
Minister.
They said that as many as five of the dead prisoners were Iraqis, two
of whom came from Samarra, a volatile town to the north of the
capital, where an attack by insurgents on the home of Mr Al-Naqib
killed four of the Interior Minister's bodyguards on June 19.
The Herald has established the names of three of the prisoners alleged
to have been killed. Two names connote ties to Syrian-based Arab
tribes, suggesting they were foreign fighters: Ahmed Abdulah Ahsamey
and Amer Lutfi Mohammed Ahmed al-Kutsia.
The third was Walid Mehdi Ahmed al-Samarrai. The last word of his name
indicates that he was one of the two said to come from Samarra, which
is in the Sunni Triangle.
The three names were provided to the Interior Ministry, where senior
adviser Sabah Khadum undertook to provide a status re****t on each. He
was asked if they were prisoners, were they alive or had they died in
custody.
But the next day he cut short an interview by hanging up the phone,
saying only: "I have no information - I don't want to comment on that
specific matter."
All seven were described as young men. One of the witnesses spoke of
the distinctive appearance of four as "Wahabbi", the colloquial Iraqi
term for the foreign fundamentalist insurgency fighters and their
Iraqi followers.
He said: "The Wahabbis had long beards, very short hair and they were
wearing dishdashas [the caftan-like garment worn by Iraqi men]."
Raising the hem of his own dishdasha to reveal the cotton pantaloons
usually worn beneath, he said: "The other three were just wearing
these - they looked normal."
One witness justified the shootings as an unintended act of mercy:
"They were happy to die because they had already been beaten by the
police for two to eight hours a day to make them talk."
After the removal of the bodies, the officer in charge of the complex,
General Raad Abdullah, is said to have called a meeting of the
policemen and told them not to talk outside the station about what had
happened. "He said it was a security issue," a witness said.
One of the Al-Amariyah witnesses said he watched as Iraqis among the
Prime Minister's bodyguards piled the prisoners' bodies into the back
of a Nissan utility and drove off. He did not know what became of
them. But the other witness said the bodies were buried west of
Baghdad, in open desert country near Abu Ghraib.
That would place their burial near the notorious prison, which was
used by Saddam Hussein's security forces to torture and kill thousands
of Iraqis. Subsequently it was revealed as the setting for the
still-unfolding prisoner abuse scandal involving US troops in the
aftermath of the fall of Baghdad.
The Herald has established that as many as 30 people, including the
victims, may have been in the courtyard. One of the witnesses said
there were five or six civilian-clad American security men in a convoy
of five or six late model four-wheel-drive vehicles that was
shepherding Dr Allawi's entourage on the day. The US military and Dr
Allawi's office refused to respond to questions about the composition
of his security team. It is understood that the core of his protection
unit is drawn from the US Special Forces units.
The security establishment where the killings are said to have
happened is on open ground on the border of the Al-Amariyah and
Al-Kudra neighborhoods in Baghdad.
About 90 policemen are stationed at the complex, which processes
insurgents and more hardened offenders among those captured in the
struggle against a wave of murder, robbery and kidnapping in
post-invasion Iraq.
The Interior Ministry denied permission for the Herald to enter the
heavily fortified police complex.
The two witnesses were independently and separately found by the
Herald. Neither approached the newspaper. They were interviewed on
different days in a private home in Baghdad, without being told the
other had spoken. A condition of the co-operation of each man was that
no personal information would be published.
Both interviews lasted more than 90 minutes and were conducted through
an interpreter, with another journalist present for one of the
meetings. The witnesses were not paid for the interviews.
Dr Allawi's office has dismissed the allegations as rumors instigated
by enemies of his interim government.
A statement in the name of spokesman Taha Hussein read: "We face these
sorts of allegations on a regular basis. Numerous groups are
attempting to hinder what the interim Iraqi government is on the verge
of achieving, and occasionally they spread outrageous accusations
hoping they will be believed and thus harm the honorable reputation of
those who sacrifice so much to protect this glorious country and its
now free and respectable people.
"Dr Allawi is turning this country into a free and democratic nation
run by the rule of law; so if your sources are as credible as they say
they are, then they are more than welcome to file a complaint in a
court of law against the Prime Minister."
In response to a question asking if Dr Allawi carried a gun, the
statement said: "[He] does not carry a pistol. He is the Prime
Minister of Iraq, not a combatant in need of any weaponry."
Sabah Khadum, a senior adviser to Interior Minister Mr Naqib, whose
****tfolio covers police matters, also dismissed the accounts.
Rejecting them as "ludicrous", Mr Khadum said of Dr Allawi: "He is a
doctor and I know him. He was my neighbor in London. He just doesn't
have it in him. Baghdad is a city of rumors This is not worth
discussing."
Mr Khadum added: "Do you think a man who is Prime Minister is going to
disqualify himself for life like this? This is not a government of
gangsters."
Asked if Dr Allawi had visited the Al-Amariyah complex - one of the
most im****tant counter-insurgency centers in Baghdad - Mr Khadum said
he could not reveal the Prime Minister's movements. But he added: "Dr
Allawi has made many visits to police stations ... he is heading the
offensive."
US officials in Iraq have not made an outright denial of the
allegations. An emailed response to questions from the Herald to the
US ambassador, John Negroponte, said: "If we attempted to refute each
[rumor], we would have no time for other business. As far as this
embassy's press office is concerned, this case is closed."
Copyright © 2004. The Sydney Morning Herald
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