Iraq’s PM Allawi shot six blindfolded prisoners ‘as example’ [Archive]

ariweiner

07-19-2004, 12:34 AM

Robin Cook demands Red Cross investigates execution claims
By David Pratt, Foreign Editor, and Torcuil Crichton

Iraq’s Prime Minister Iyad Allawi shot dead as many as six suspected insurgents last month, just days before Washington handed political control over to his new government.

Two separate witnesses said that the prisoners, blindfolded and handcuffed, were lined up against a wall in a courtyard next to a maximum security cell at al-Amariyah prison in Baghdad. Allawi then pulled out a pistol and shot them in the head, telling policemen that he was setting an example on how to deal with resistance fighters. Allawi is said to have told onlookers that the men “deserved worse than death”.

Some 30 witnesses are said to have been present in the compound when Allawi paid a surprise visit to the security facility to reassure police officers that they would be protected from reprisals if they killed insurgents in the course of their duty.

The claims, first published in the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday and written by the distinguished Australian journalist Paul McGeough, have raised fears that Dr Allawi is returning to the cold-blooded tactics of his predecessor, Saddam Hussein, and has led to urgent calls for the Red Cross to launch an investigation.

“These are dreadful allegations. It is vital that they are cleared up one way or another and that needs an independent inquiry,” said former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who quit the Cabinet over the Iraq war.

“An international body such as the Red Cross would be best able to give authority to the investigation that the situation now demands.”

Senior US officials have not made an outright dismissal of the allegations but Allawi’s office has denied the claims concerning the conduct of the man meant to be leading Iraq towards democratic elections in January.

In a letter to the newspaper, it said Allawi had never visited the prison, did not carry a gun, and that the allegations are rumours instigated by enemies of Allawi’s government.

Reports of the killings were also dismissed by the UK government. A spokesman for the Foreign Office said its staff in Baghdad had no knowledge of the allegations. “There are thousands of rumours sweeping the city and this is just one of them,” he said.

In contrast, Downing Street was aware of the report but said it was an issue for the Iraqi government. “This was put to Allawi at a press conference on Thursday and he denied it. As far as we are concerned the matter is dealt with,” an official said.

The reports, in a country where rumour is as powerful as fact, are a devastating blow to the interim Iraqi’s government’s role in creating a climate for free democratic elections .

As well as his own security staff, Allawi is accompanied at all times by a close protection unit of soldiers drawn from US special forces. Having am bushed the UN plan to appoint a technocratic interim prime minister last month, Allawi, a former hitman for the Saddam regime, has shown signs of flexing his power under the interim constitution to its limits and breaking out of US control.

“If we attempted to refute each rumour, we would have no time for other business, as far as this press office is concerned, this case is closed.” said a spokesman at the US embassy in Baghdad.

lIraq’s justice minister Malik al-Hassan escaped but five bodyguards were killed when a suicide bomber drove into his convoy yesterday in an attack claimed by a group led by al-Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

http://www.sundayherald.com/43458

ariweiner

07-19-2004, 12:39 AM

More detailed:

Special report: Iyad Allawi
Witnesses claim Iraq’s new Prime Minister executed prisoners in cold blood just days before June handover

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 Washington 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 centre, in the city’s southwestern 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 Sydney Morning Herald in Australia, saying Dr Allawi had never visited the centre and he did not carry a gun. But the informants told the newspaper 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 Sydney Morning 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 metres 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 to the courtyard, but the last man in 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 Washington knows its man in Baghdad, and precisely what he envisages for the new Iraq.

There is much debate and rumour 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 Cannistraro, 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 leadership credentials as a “strongman” in a war-ravaged country that has no experience of democracy.

Dr Allawi’s statement dismissed the allegations as rumours 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 Sydney Morning 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 shield 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 Sydney Morning Herald 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 he was one of the two said to come from Samarra – in the Sunni Triangle.

The three names were provided to the Interior Ministry, where senior adviser Sabah Khadum undertook to provide a status report 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 kaftan-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 vehicle 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.

The Sydney Morning 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 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 neighbourhoods 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 Sydney Morning Herald to enter the heavily fortified police complex.

The two witnesses were independently and separately found by the Sydney Morning 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 rumours 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 honourable 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 portfolio 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 neighbour in London. He just doesn’t have it in him. Baghdad is a city of rumours. 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 important counter-insurgency centres 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 e-mailed response to questions to the US ambassador, John Negroponte, said: “If we attempted to refute each [rumour], we would have no time for other business. As far as this embassy’s press office is concerned, this case is closed.”

This article is reprinted courtesy of The Sydney Morning Herald
Out of the shadows: the rise of Baghdad’s new hardman
When the United Nations sent Lakhdar Brahimi to Baghdad to form an interim government of “technocrats and professionals” to guide Iraq to its January elections, Iyad Allawi was not even in the frame. But the US and Allawi, a master of backroom political manoeuvring, ambushed the process and the former Saddam assassin broke from a low-profile cover on the Iraq governing council to take power.

Having outflanked the UN last month, Allawi shows signs of squirming out of the control of the US administration that installed him. To become leader, he overcame arch-rival Ahmad Chalabi, the UN and his own shadowy past.

Portrayed as a 58-year-old neurologist who lived in British exile for 30 years, Dr Iyad Allawi in fact helped Saddam kill his way to power in the 1960s. He apparently fled to London in 1971 but remained on Saddam’s payroll for longer.

A former CIA officer, Vincent Cannistraro, said Allawi has “blood on his hands” from his London days. He was involved in Iraqi “hit team” that killed Baath Party dissenters throughout Europe. The break with Saddam came, it is suggested, over money – not political principle.

In 1978, Saddam’s brutal world turned on him. He was attacked in his London bed by a man brandishing an axe and took a year to recover from horrific injuries. Then he began a long and close association with MI6 and the CIA, which still funds his Iraqi National Accord (INA) organisation. In the mid-1990s, the CIA funded an INA car-bombing campaign in Baghdad to destabilise the Saddam regime.

A vivid pen portrait of the Prime Minister was written by a former medical school classmate this year: “[He] carried a gun on his belt and frequently brandished it, terrorising the medical students.” His degree was, she said, conferred upon him by the Baath Party. An unvarnished New Yorker magazine profile of Allawi followed listing thuggery as his strongest suite.

Washington may be troubled by the conduct of the man they have anointed to nurture democracy in Iraq, but having punted on Allawi they are stuck with him. For the US, Allawi represents the best chance of getting things done, but first he must secure Iraq by breaking the insurgency. If he kills the resistance he will prevail .

Opponents may yet destroy Allawi but the word in Baghdad is that a hardman is back in charge, his hands soaked in blood. This is the new Iraq.