Baghdad (AsiaNews/Agencies) Iraq's Interior Ministry announced that it was setting up a commission of inquiry to investigate the possible existence of a "death squad" within the police operating in Baghdad and targeting minority Sunnis.
The decision was prompted by revelations made by US Major General Joseph Peterson, who oversees the training of Iraqi police. Peterson said that US forces stopped 22 Iraqis in a northern district of the capital wearing highway patrol uniforms as they were leading away a Sunni man to be executed.
US military spokesman Major General Rick said the four ringleaders in the group, which posed as special police commandos, are now in US custody at Abu Ghraib prison. The 18 others, along with the Sunni man, who is accused of murder, are in an Iraqi jail.
The Interior Ministry "will investigate whether they actually work for the Interior Ministry or claim that," said Major General Hussein Kamal, a deputy head of the ministry.
Peterson told the Tribune that the four men held by US authorities were apparently loyal to the Badr Organization, an armed militia loyal to the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the most powerful party in the country's ruling Shiite coalition. Badr brigades are trained in Iran
Paramilitary militias like the Kurdish peshmerga sometimes work openly with the police, but sometimes act on their own.
Sunni political groups and religious organisations have accused elements within the security forces of indiscriminately arresting and summarily executing Sunnis.
A spokesman for the Committee of Muslim Scholars, one of the main Sunni Arab organisations, said the death squad discovered in Baghdad was not an isolated incident.
"It's not just one death squad. There are many," the spokesman said. "In the northern Baghdad district of Hurriyah alone, some 70 young men from our community have been killed by these units, and the overall toll figure is likely to be more than 1,000 and includes 20 imams" he added.
Survivors often say their attackers were dressed in police uniforms, but Interior Ministry officials have countered that the clothes are easily available on the street and have suggested that the killings are committed by criminals or militiamen posing as police.
