650+ Baghdad police brigade to be 'retrained' following complicity in death squads

Police at Baghdad checkpoint

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraqi authorities have taken a police brigade out of service and returned them to training because of "complicity" with death squads in the wake of a mass kidnapping in Baghdad this week, a U.S. military spokesman said Wednesday.

The kidnapping took place on Sunday, when gunmen stormed into a frozen meats factory in the Amil district and snatched 24 workers, shooting two others. The bodies of seven of the workers were found later but the fate of the others remains unknown.

Sunni leaders blamed Shiite militias and suggested security forces had turned a blind eye to the attack.

The top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, said the Iraqi police brigade in the area had been ordered to stand down and was undergoing re-training.

"There was some possible complicity in allowing death squad elements to move freely when they should have been impeding them," he told a Baghdad press conference.

"The forces in the unit have not put their full allegiance to the government of Iraq and gave their allegiance to others," he said.

The suspended brigade has about 650-700 policemen, Interior Ministry spokesman Lt. Col. Karim Mohammedawi said.

The Iraqi Interior Ministry said Tuesday that the commander of the unit, a lieutenant colonel, had been detained and was being investigated, and that the major general who commands the battalion that includes the suspended brigade has been suspended temporarily and ordered transferred.

Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, the chief ministry spokesman, said a random selection of troops in the suspended unit were being investigated for ties to militias.

Read the rest at the Washington Post

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