UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
"BAGHDAD, 29 Oct 2006 (IRIN) - The Iraqi government must move quickly to prosecute all Ministry of Interior personnel responsible for "death squad" killings in Baghdad and elsewhere, the New-York based NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Saturday.
"Evidence suggests that Iraqi security forces are involved in these horrific crimes, and thus far the government has not held them accountable," said Sarah Leah Whitson, director of HRW’s Middle East division. "The Iraqi government must stop giving protection to security forces responsible for abduction, torture and murder."
On 15 October, Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shi'ite Muslim, pledged in a nationally televised address to crack down on militias. "The state and the militias cannot coexist. Arms can only be in the hands of the government and no one has the right to be above the law," al-Maliki said.
However, analysts say that government rhetoric is not being matched by action. "He [al-Maliki] has issued repeated statements against illegal armed groups, but he is not able to take any concerted action against these militias because of their political weight in his government," said Emad al-Janabi, a Baghdad-based political sciences professor at the University of Mosul.
Shi'ite militias - such as the al-Mahdi army and the Badr Brigade, the two most prominent - have links with religious members of the government, analysts say. As such, these militias are thought to have infiltrated the country's police force and are running death squads which roam Baghdad and nearby cities and towns snatching, torturing and killing Sunnis by the thousands."
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