.Dead reckoning
THE Sunni imam in Baghdad's al-Salam City clings to sanity. But his mixed community is a sectarian tinderbox and, increasingly, Sheik Fadal Kalaf Jasam struggles to maintain his grip.
He has been working tirelessly to hold the community together, shuttling between Shiite and Sunni mosques and the offices and compounds of the US military, Iraqi security forces and the religious-backed militias that make their own rules in the new Iraq.
But now he is tortured by indecision. The 42-year-old cleric fears that information he is sitting on could spark the sort of sectarian violence that has not previously been visited on this hard-scrabble pocket of the north-west corner of Baghdad. There are about 3000 working-class families here - half Shiite, half Sunni.
Street talk is filled with speculation about the fate of more than 50 locals who, two weeks ago, were dragged from their beds in the dead of night by masked gunmen.
All were carted away handcuffed and blindfolded. But Sheik Fadal has been able to confirm that 12 were later shot in the head, and their bodies dumped in nearby suburbs and on the other side of the city. Three of the bodies have been brought back to al-Salam City; all three were still cuffed and blindfolded.
Hassan al-Rahami, a 50-year-old grain merchant, was a Shiite who was punished for his membership of Saddam Hussein's Baath party. On Thursday his family set up a traditional tent outside their home to receive condolences. Two other bodies were found on a rubbish tip on Wednesday - the imam identified them simply as "Sabah and his son".
Sheik Fadal has confirmed the other nine deaths from pictures filed at the central morgue where, he said, he was informed that the bodies had already been taken to Najaf, in the Shiite south, to be buried in a mass grave because their relatives had not claimed them from a morgue that was overflowing.
The imam cannot decide if he should risk an explosion of Sunni anger by informing the community that so many of their brothers and fathers have been executed, or if he should just sit tight, leaving them to stew in a cauldron of suspicion and faltering hope.
"What can I tell them?" he pleaded. "I fear how they will respond."
The timing of the abductions meant they received little attention. In the midst of the crisis sparked by the insurgency bombing of the Shiites' revered Golden Mosque in Samarra on February 22, the unexplained disappearances in the early hours of the next day hardly rated as a news story.
As the country erupted in Shiite fury, al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya news channels ran tickertape reports of the official denials of any involvement by Iraq's new, US-trained security forces. But chilling as it was, the story quickly died for want of detail and an explanation.
Now the finger of suspicion is falling on the Wolf Brigade, an Iraqi Interior Ministry commando unit, which frequently is accused of running - or protecting - groups of freelance killers. These are the death squads that haunt liberated Iraq.
The mass abduction and killing of Sunni men, often by a signature gunshot to the back of their heads, happen with increasing - and disturbing - frequency.
Members of Shiite religious militias loyal to the parties that control government, or units made up of their fighters who have been folded into the ranks of Iraq's security forces, are accused of using their government-issued weapons, uniforms, vehicles and licence to move during curfew as they take revenge against Sunnis for three years of the insurgency and 30 years of Saddam.
In January US troops caught one of the squads red-handed - 22 police commandos under the control of the Interior Ministry were arrested as they set about executing a Sunni hostage.
Observers were struck most by what was presumed to be US Army General Joseph Peterson's deliberate use of the plural when he told reporters: "We have found one of the death squads [and] we believe there's more of them out there."
The former director of the Baghdad morgue, Faik Bakir, estimated that the squads were responsible for as many as 7000 summary executions, and the UN's outgoing human rights officer in Baghdad, John Pace, last week laid blame for most of these deaths at the feet of the Badr Badr Brigade, the militia wing of SCIRI, the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which is one of the biggest Shiite religious parties.
In a series of interviews this week, several people who witnessed or claimed to have direct knowledge of the February 23 round-up in al-Salam City claimed it was the work of the much-feared Wolf Brigade and, in the case of one well-informed source, that all the prisoners had been executed.
A MAN who was in a good position during the dawn raid is Commander Hytham Aboud al-Ameer.
He is the leader in al-Salam City of the Mahdi Army, a militia that is run by the young firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. The Mahdi Army competes with the Badr Badr Brigade for turf and loyalty.
Hytham was on guard duty on the roof of his house when a convoy of white, late-model vehicles, like those supplied to government agencies, swept into his street.
Sipping on a Pepsi, he recalled: "Five vehicles without number plates came into our street - four Chevrolets and a Nissan pick-up. There were many men with new-looking weapons. They had a list of names and a masked guide who pointed to houses and then to individuals when they were brought out.
"Ishmail Aghedi tried to put up a fight - he was in his bathroom with a gun but they killed him," Hytham said. "His brother Uday was killed in a separate attack on their real estate office 48 hours before this attack."
Such was this dawn show of Badr Badr force that the Mahdi Army commander made no effort to protect his turf. Admitting that he was afraid, he said that he opted to stay in the shadows and watch the Badr Badr boys at work: "They were very professional. They wore Iraqi police uniforms, and I'm sure they were policemen because a few days later I saw some of the same vehicles with a US patrol when they returned to our neighbourhood to arrest Ibrahim al-Jabouri and his brother.
"The Sunnis I saw being piled onto the Nissan pick-up were bad people - mostly from the al-Ghadi tribe. One of them worked with the insurgency and some of the others made two attacks on a Shiite mosque — in the first they injured Akiel, the muezzin, and sent him to hospital for three weeks; the next time they sent him to his grave."
Lounging in a tracksuit and a white baseball cap, Hytham explained that he had his own working relationship with the Wolf Brigade: "When our units captured criminals we used to give them to the Americans, but they were always released and came back to cause trouble; now we give them to the Wolf Brigade and they never come back.
"The al-Ghadi tribe accuses the Mahdi Army of these abductions, but I swear it was not us - it was the Badr Badr Brigade."
ANOTHER who observed the raid at close quarters was the white-robed Abdul Latif Kathan who, along with his mechanic brother Abdul Rakhman, 34, was among those rounded up.
The 30-year-old electrician is utterly confused - he was given no reason for his detention and no explanation for his release along with three others within just a few hours of his capture.
Highly agitated, he recalled: "They broke down the door and when my brother's wife tried to rescue him, they beat her. When they took us away the Nissan drove for about 15 minutes and then pulled up at an office building where they switched us to a LandCruiser."
He said that nine prisoners were squeezed into the vehicle and, importantly, he remembered seeing the now dead grain merchant Hassan al-Rahami among those in the vehicle.
"After 10 more minutes we stop at a building where they locked us in a room. We are not blindfolded now, but they said anyone who opens his eyes is dead.
"Myself and three others were taken from the room - they swapped our handcuffs for plastic wire; made new blindfolds from strips of blanket; and drove us to al Waizeriah, where we were dumped at the back of the al-Bakir Military College."
Shaking visibly, he concluded: "People were going to work, but they were scared of us. They asked if we were terrorists and ran away, but finally a man untied us, gave us water and drove us to our homes."
Like so many Iraqis when a relative goes missing, Abdul Latif has been doing the rounds of hospitals and morgues, but so far he has not found his brother.
IT WAS almost lunchtime on Thursday, but Baghdad was taking a twilight whipping from the tourab, a violent dust storm that strikes at this time of year. And in the still air of the National Security Ministry bunker deep inside the Green Zone, Abdul Karim al-Anzi was whipping up his own storm of denial at the Herald's suggestion that death squads were at work in Iraq.
"This is all the work of the residue of the Baath party trying to start civil war," the Security Minister insisted. "These allegations against our security forces are an attempt to divide us. Never!"
Did the security forces give cover to killers from the Badr Badr Brigade or the Mahdi Army? "The Interior Ministry would not allow it. As a minister I'm fully aware of what is happening - and what you claim is not happening.
"It's the duty of the Interior Ministry to attack terrorists. The local and foreign media are trying to stir sectarian violence, but we're building the new Iraq on human rights and democracy."
This Shiite minister, a member of the Dawa religious party, then explained that just because killers wore police uniforms did not mean that they were policemen. He added helpfully: "A lot of thieves in Australia wear police uniforms - that doesn't mean that all policemen in your country are thieves."
IT HAS been a bad week in Iraq. Inevitably the Sunni families of al-Salam City will hear of the fate of their men, and in the meantime Sheik Fadal will wrestle with his limited options.
Publicly the local Shiite sympathise. But one of them was quick to justify the action of the death squads and what he perceived as a shift in the local balance of power.
He explained: "We have a saying - 'if a man is not scared of the punishment he might get, he'll do anything'. The Sunnis in our district will not respond now - they know the punishment and they are scared.
"Look into their eyes - you can see it."
As the country erupted in Shiite fury, al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya news channels ran tickertape reports of the official denials of any involvement by Iraq's new, US-trained security forces. But chilling as it was, the story quickly died for want of detail and an explanation.
Now the finger of suspicion is falling on the Wolf Brigade, an Iraqi Interior Ministry commando unit, which frequently is accused of running - or protecting - groups of freelance killers. These are the death squads that haunt liberated Iraq.
The mass abduction and killing of Sunni men, often by a signature gunshot to the back of their heads, happen with increasing - and disturbing - frequency.
Members of Shiite religious militias loyal to the parties that control government, or units made up of their fighters who have been folded into the ranks of Iraq's security forces, are accused of using their government-issued weapons, uniforms, vehicles and licence to move during curfew as they take revenge against Sunnis for three years of the insurgency and 30 years of Saddam.
In January US troops caught one of the squads red-handed - 22 police commandos under the control of the Interior Ministry were arrested as they set about executing a Sunni hostage.
Observers were struck most by what was presumed to be US Army General Joseph Peterson's deliberate use of the plural when he told reporters: "We have found one of the death squads [and] we believe there's more of them out there."
The former director of the Baghdad morgue, Faik Bakir, estimated that the squads were responsible for as many as 7000 summary executions, and the UN's outgoing human rights officer in Baghdad, John Pace, last week laid blame for most of these deaths at the feet of the Badr Badr Brigade, the militia wing of SCIRI, the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which is one of the biggest Shiite religious parties.
In a series of interviews this week, several people who witnessed or claimed to have direct knowledge of the February 23 round-up in al-Salam City claimed it was the work of the much-feared Wolf Brigade and, in the case of one well-informed source, that all the prisoners had been executed.
A MAN who was in a good position during the dawn raid is Commander Hytham Aboud al-Ameer.
He is the leader in al-Salam City of the Mahdi Army, a militia that is run by the young firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. The Mahdi Army competes with the Badr Badr Brigade for turf and loyalty.
Hytham was on guard duty on the roof of his house when a convoy of white, late-model vehicles, like those supplied to government agencies, swept into his street.
Sipping on a Pepsi, he recalled: "Five vehicles without number plates came into our street - four Chevrolets and a Nissan pick-up. There were many men with new-looking weapons. They had a list of names and a masked guide who pointed to houses and then to individuals when they were brought out.
"Ishmail Aghedi tried to put up a fight - he was in his bathroom with a gun but they killed him," Hytham said. "His brother Uday was killed in a separate attack on their real estate office 48 hours before this attack."
Such was this dawn show of Badr Badr force that the Mahdi Army commander made no effort to protect his turf. Admitting that he was afraid, he said that he opted to stay in the shadows and watch the Badr Badr boys at work: "They were very professional. They wore Iraqi police uniforms, and I'm sure they were policemen because a few days later I saw some of the same vehicles with a US patrol when they returned to our neighbourhood to arrest Ibrahim al-Jabouri and his brother.
"The Sunnis I saw being piled onto the Nissan pick-up were bad people - mostly from the al-Ghadi tribe. One of them worked with the insurgency and some of the others made two attacks on a Shiite mosque — in the first they injured Akiel, the muezzin, and sent him to hospital for three weeks; the next time they sent him to his grave."
Lounging in a tracksuit and a white baseball cap, Hytham explained that he had his own working relationship with the Wolf Brigade: "When our units captured criminals we used to give them to the Americans, but they were always released and came back to cause trouble; now we give them to the Wolf Brigade and they never come back.
"The al-Ghadi tribe accuses the Mahdi Army of these abductions, but I swear it was not us - it was the Badr Badr Brigade."
ANOTHER who observed the raid at close quarters was the white-robed Abdul Latif Kathan who, along with his mechanic brother Abdul Rakhman, 34, was among those rounded up.
The 30-year-old electrician is utterly confused - he was given no reason for his detention and no explanation for his release along with three others within just a few hours of his capture.
Highly agitated, he recalled: "They broke down the door and when my brother's wife tried to rescue him, they beat her. When they took us away the Nissan drove for about 15 minutes and then pulled up at an office building where they switched us to a LandCruiser."
He said that nine prisoners were squeezed into the vehicle and, importantly, he remembered seeing the now dead grain merchant Hassan al-Rahami among those in the vehicle.
"After 10 more minutes we stop at a building where they locked us in a room. We are not blindfolded now, but they said anyone who opens his eyes is dead.
"Myself and three others were taken from the room - they swapped our handcuffs for plastic wire; made new blindfolds from strips of blanket; and drove us to al Waizeriah, where we were dumped at the back of the al-Bakir Military College."
Shaking visibly, he concluded: "People were going to work, but they were scared of us. They asked if we were terrorists and ran away, but finally a man untied us, gave us water and drove us to our homes."
Like so many Iraqis when a relative goes missing, Abdul Latif has been doing the rounds of hospitals and morgues, but so far he has not found his brother.
IT WAS almost lunchtime on Thursday, but Baghdad was taking a twilight whipping from the tourab, a violent dust storm that strikes at this time of year. And in the still air of the National Security Ministry bunker deep inside the Green Zone, Abdul Karim al-Anzi was whipping up his own storm of denial at the Herald's suggestion that death squads were at work in Iraq.
"This is all the work of the residue of the Baath party trying to start civil war," the Security Minister insisted. "These allegations against our security forces are an attempt to divide us. Never!"
Did the security forces give cover to killers from the Badr Badr Brigade or the Mahdi Army? "The Interior Ministry would not allow it. As a minister I'm fully aware of what is happening - and what you claim is not happening.
"It's the duty of the Interior Ministry to attack terrorists. The local and foreign media are trying to stir sectarian violence, but we're building the new Iraq on human rights and democracy."
This Shiite minister, a member of the Dawa religious party, then explained that just because killers wore police uniforms did not mean that they were policemen. He added helpfully: "A lot of thieves in Australia wear police uniforms - that doesn't mean that all policemen in your country are thieves."
IT HAS been a bad week in Iraq. Inevitably the Sunni families of al-Salam City will hear of the fate of their men, and in the meantime Sheik Fadal will wrestle with his limited options.
Publicly the local Shiite sympathise. But one of them was quick to justify the action of the death squads and what he perceived as a shift in the local balance of power.
He explained: "We have a saying - 'if a man is not scared of the punishment he might get, he'll do anything'. The Sunnis in our district will not respond now - they know the punishment and they are scared.
"Look into their eyes - you can see it."
SMH.com
He has been working tirelessly to hold the community together, shuttling between Shiite and Sunni mosques and the offices and compounds of the US military, Iraqi security forces and the religious-backed militias that make their own rules in the new Iraq.
But now he is tortured by indecision. The 42-year-old cleric fears that information he is sitting on could spark the sort of sectarian violence that has not previously been visited on this hard-scrabble pocket of the north-west corner of Baghdad. There are about 3000 working-class families here - half Shiite, half Sunni.
Street talk is filled with speculation about the fate of more than 50 locals who, two weeks ago, were dragged from their beds in the dead of night by masked gunmen.
All were carted away handcuffed and blindfolded. But Sheik Fadal has been able to confirm that 12 were later shot in the head, and their bodies dumped in nearby suburbs and on the other side of the city. Three of the bodies have been brought back to al-Salam City; all three were still cuffed and blindfolded.
Hassan al-Rahami, a 50-year-old grain merchant, was a Shiite who was punished for his membership of Saddam Hussein's Baath party. On Thursday his family set up a traditional tent outside their home to receive condolences. Two other bodies were found on a rubbish tip on Wednesday - the imam identified them simply as "Sabah and his son".
Sheik Fadal has confirmed the other nine deaths from pictures filed at the central morgue where, he said, he was informed that the bodies had already been taken to Najaf, in the Shiite south, to be buried in a mass grave because their relatives had not claimed them from a morgue that was overflowing.
The imam cannot decide if he should risk an explosion of Sunni anger by informing the community that so many of their brothers and fathers have been executed, or if he should just sit tight, leaving them to stew in a cauldron of suspicion and faltering hope.
"What can I tell them?" he pleaded. "I fear how they will respond."
The timing of the abductions meant they received little attention. In the midst of the crisis sparked by the insurgency bombing of the Shiites' revered Golden Mosque in Samarra on February 22, the unexplained disappearances in the early hours of the next day hardly rated as a news story.
As the country erupted in Shiite fury, al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya news channels ran tickertape reports of the official denials of any involvement by Iraq's new, US-trained security forces. But chilling as it was, the story quickly died for want of detail and an explanation.
Now the finger of suspicion is falling on the Wolf Brigade, an Iraqi Interior Ministry commando unit, which frequently is accused of running - or protecting - groups of freelance killers. These are the death squads that haunt liberated Iraq.
The mass abduction and killing of Sunni men, often by a signature gunshot to the back of their heads, happen with increasing - and disturbing - frequency.
Members of Shiite religious militias loyal to the parties that control government, or units made up of their fighters who have been folded into the ranks of Iraq's security forces, are accused of using their government-issued weapons, uniforms, vehicles and licence to move during curfew as they take revenge against Sunnis for three years of the insurgency and 30 years of Saddam.
In January US troops caught one of the squads red-handed - 22 police commandos under the control of the Interior Ministry were arrested as they set about executing a Sunni hostage.
Observers were struck most by what was presumed to be US Army General Joseph Peterson's deliberate use of the plural when he told reporters: "We have found one of the death squads [and] we believe there's more of them out there."
The former director of the Baghdad morgue, Faik Bakir, estimated that the squads were responsible for as many as 7000 summary executions, and the UN's outgoing human rights officer in Baghdad, John Pace, last week laid blame for most of these deaths at the feet of the Badr Badr Brigade, the militia wing of SCIRI, the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which is one of the biggest Shiite religious parties.
In a series of interviews this week, several people who witnessed or claimed to have direct knowledge of the February 23 round-up in al-Salam City claimed it was the work of the much-feared Wolf Brigade and, in the case of one well-informed source, that all the prisoners had been executed.
A MAN who was in a good position during the dawn raid is Commander Hytham Aboud al-Ameer.
He is the leader in al-Salam City of the Mahdi Army, a militia that is run by the young firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. The Mahdi Army competes with the Badr Badr Brigade for turf and loyalty.
Hytham was on guard duty on the roof of his house when a convoy of white, late-model vehicles, like those supplied to government agencies, swept into his street.
Sipping on a Pepsi, he recalled: "Five vehicles without number plates came into our street - four Chevrolets and a Nissan pick-up. There were many men with new-looking weapons. They had a list of names and a masked guide who pointed to houses and then to individuals when they were brought out.
"Ishmail Aghedi tried to put up a fight - he was in his bathroom with a gun but they killed him," Hytham said. "His brother Uday was killed in a separate attack on their real estate office 48 hours before this attack."
Such was this dawn show of Badr Badr force that the Mahdi Army commander made no effort to protect his turf. Admitting that he was afraid, he said that he opted to stay in the shadows and watch the Badr Badr boys at work: "They were very professional. They wore Iraqi police uniforms, and I'm sure they were policemen because a few days later I saw some of the same vehicles with a US patrol when they returned to our neighbourhood to arrest Ibrahim al-Jabouri and his brother.
"The Sunnis I saw being piled onto the Nissan pick-up were bad people - mostly from the al-Ghadi tribe. One of them worked with the insurgency and some of the others made two attacks on a Shiite mosque — in the first they injured Akiel, the muezzin, and sent him to hospital for three weeks; the next time they sent him to his grave."
Lounging in a tracksuit and a white baseball cap, Hytham explained that he had his own working relationship with the Wolf Brigade: "When our units captured criminals we used to give them to the Americans, but they were always released and came back to cause trouble; now we give them to the Wolf Brigade and they never come back.
"The al-Ghadi tribe accuses the Mahdi Army of these abductions, but I swear it was not us - it was the Badr Badr Brigade."
ANOTHER who observed the raid at close quarters was the white-robed Abdul Latif Kathan who, along with his mechanic brother Abdul Rakhman, 34, was among those rounded up.
The 30-year-old electrician is utterly confused - he was given no reason for his detention and no explanation for his release along with three others within just a few hours of his capture.
Highly agitated, he recalled: "They broke down the door and when my brother's wife tried to rescue him, they beat her. When they took us away the Nissan drove for about 15 minutes and then pulled up at an office building where they switched us to a LandCruiser."
He said that nine prisoners were squeezed into the vehicle and, importantly, he remembered seeing the now dead grain merchant Hassan al-Rahami among those in the vehicle.
"After 10 more minutes we stop at a building where they locked us in a room. We are not blindfolded now, but they said anyone who opens his eyes is dead.
"Myself and three others were taken from the room - they swapped our handcuffs for plastic wire; made new blindfolds from strips of blanket; and drove us to al Waizeriah, where we were dumped at the back of the al-Bakir Military College."
Shaking visibly, he concluded: "People were going to work, but they were scared of us. They asked if we were terrorists and ran away, but finally a man untied us, gave us water and drove us to our homes."
Like so many Iraqis when a relative goes missing, Abdul Latif has been doing the rounds of hospitals and morgues, but so far he has not found his brother.
IT WAS almost lunchtime on Thursday, but Baghdad was taking a twilight whipping from the tourab, a violent dust storm that strikes at this time of year. And in the still air of the National Security Ministry bunker deep inside the Green Zone, Abdul Karim al-Anzi was whipping up his own storm of denial at the Herald's suggestion that death squads were at work in Iraq.
"This is all the work of the residue of the Baath party trying to start civil war," the Security Minister insisted. "These allegations against our security forces are an attempt to divide us. Never!"
Did the security forces give cover to killers from the Badr Badr Brigade or the Mahdi Army? "The Interior Ministry would not allow it. As a minister I'm fully aware of what is happening - and what you claim is not happening.
"It's the duty of the Interior Ministry to attack terrorists. The local and foreign media are trying to stir sectarian violence, but we're building the new Iraq on human rights and democracy."
This Shiite minister, a member of the Dawa religious party, then explained that just because killers wore police uniforms did not mean that they were policemen. He added helpfully: "A lot of thieves in Australia wear police uniforms - that doesn't mean that all policemen in your country are thieves."
IT HAS been a bad week in Iraq. Inevitably the Sunni families of al-Salam City will hear of the fate of their men, and in the meantime Sheik Fadal will wrestle with his limited options.
Publicly the local Shiite sympathise. But one of them was quick to justify the action of the death squads and what he perceived as a shift in the local balance of power.
He explained: "We have a saying - 'if a man is not scared of the punishment he might get, he'll do anything'. The Sunnis in our district will not respond now - they know the punishment and they are scared.
"Look into their eyes - you can see it."
As the country erupted in Shiite fury, al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya news channels ran tickertape reports of the official denials of any involvement by Iraq's new, US-trained security forces. But chilling as it was, the story quickly died for want of detail and an explanation.
Now the finger of suspicion is falling on the Wolf Brigade, an Iraqi Interior Ministry commando unit, which frequently is accused of running - or protecting - groups of freelance killers. These are the death squads that haunt liberated Iraq.
The mass abduction and killing of Sunni men, often by a signature gunshot to the back of their heads, happen with increasing - and disturbing - frequency.
Members of Shiite religious militias loyal to the parties that control government, or units made up of their fighters who have been folded into the ranks of Iraq's security forces, are accused of using their government-issued weapons, uniforms, vehicles and licence to move during curfew as they take revenge against Sunnis for three years of the insurgency and 30 years of Saddam.
In January US troops caught one of the squads red-handed - 22 police commandos under the control of the Interior Ministry were arrested as they set about executing a Sunni hostage.
Observers were struck most by what was presumed to be US Army General Joseph Peterson's deliberate use of the plural when he told reporters: "We have found one of the death squads [and] we believe there's more of them out there."
The former director of the Baghdad morgue, Faik Bakir, estimated that the squads were responsible for as many as 7000 summary executions, and the UN's outgoing human rights officer in Baghdad, John Pace, last week laid blame for most of these deaths at the feet of the Badr Badr Brigade, the militia wing of SCIRI, the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which is one of the biggest Shiite religious parties.
In a series of interviews this week, several people who witnessed or claimed to have direct knowledge of the February 23 round-up in al-Salam City claimed it was the work of the much-feared Wolf Brigade and, in the case of one well-informed source, that all the prisoners had been executed.
A MAN who was in a good position during the dawn raid is Commander Hytham Aboud al-Ameer.
He is the leader in al-Salam City of the Mahdi Army, a militia that is run by the young firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. The Mahdi Army competes with the Badr Badr Brigade for turf and loyalty.
Hytham was on guard duty on the roof of his house when a convoy of white, late-model vehicles, like those supplied to government agencies, swept into his street.
Sipping on a Pepsi, he recalled: "Five vehicles without number plates came into our street - four Chevrolets and a Nissan pick-up. There were many men with new-looking weapons. They had a list of names and a masked guide who pointed to houses and then to individuals when they were brought out.
"Ishmail Aghedi tried to put up a fight - he was in his bathroom with a gun but they killed him," Hytham said. "His brother Uday was killed in a separate attack on their real estate office 48 hours before this attack."
Such was this dawn show of Badr Badr force that the Mahdi Army commander made no effort to protect his turf. Admitting that he was afraid, he said that he opted to stay in the shadows and watch the Badr Badr boys at work: "They were very professional. They wore Iraqi police uniforms, and I'm sure they were policemen because a few days later I saw some of the same vehicles with a US patrol when they returned to our neighbourhood to arrest Ibrahim al-Jabouri and his brother.
"The Sunnis I saw being piled onto the Nissan pick-up were bad people - mostly from the al-Ghadi tribe. One of them worked with the insurgency and some of the others made two attacks on a Shiite mosque — in the first they injured Akiel, the muezzin, and sent him to hospital for three weeks; the next time they sent him to his grave."
Lounging in a tracksuit and a white baseball cap, Hytham explained that he had his own working relationship with the Wolf Brigade: "When our units captured criminals we used to give them to the Americans, but they were always released and came back to cause trouble; now we give them to the Wolf Brigade and they never come back.
"The al-Ghadi tribe accuses the Mahdi Army of these abductions, but I swear it was not us - it was the Badr Badr Brigade."
ANOTHER who observed the raid at close quarters was the white-robed Abdul Latif Kathan who, along with his mechanic brother Abdul Rakhman, 34, was among those rounded up.
The 30-year-old electrician is utterly confused - he was given no reason for his detention and no explanation for his release along with three others within just a few hours of his capture.
Highly agitated, he recalled: "They broke down the door and when my brother's wife tried to rescue him, they beat her. When they took us away the Nissan drove for about 15 minutes and then pulled up at an office building where they switched us to a LandCruiser."
He said that nine prisoners were squeezed into the vehicle and, importantly, he remembered seeing the now dead grain merchant Hassan al-Rahami among those in the vehicle.
"After 10 more minutes we stop at a building where they locked us in a room. We are not blindfolded now, but they said anyone who opens his eyes is dead.
"Myself and three others were taken from the room - they swapped our handcuffs for plastic wire; made new blindfolds from strips of blanket; and drove us to al Waizeriah, where we were dumped at the back of the al-Bakir Military College."
Shaking visibly, he concluded: "People were going to work, but they were scared of us. They asked if we were terrorists and ran away, but finally a man untied us, gave us water and drove us to our homes."
Like so many Iraqis when a relative goes missing, Abdul Latif has been doing the rounds of hospitals and morgues, but so far he has not found his brother.
IT WAS almost lunchtime on Thursday, but Baghdad was taking a twilight whipping from the tourab, a violent dust storm that strikes at this time of year. And in the still air of the National Security Ministry bunker deep inside the Green Zone, Abdul Karim al-Anzi was whipping up his own storm of denial at the Herald's suggestion that death squads were at work in Iraq.
"This is all the work of the residue of the Baath party trying to start civil war," the Security Minister insisted. "These allegations against our security forces are an attempt to divide us. Never!"
Did the security forces give cover to killers from the Badr Badr Brigade or the Mahdi Army? "The Interior Ministry would not allow it. As a minister I'm fully aware of what is happening - and what you claim is not happening.
"It's the duty of the Interior Ministry to attack terrorists. The local and foreign media are trying to stir sectarian violence, but we're building the new Iraq on human rights and democracy."
This Shiite minister, a member of the Dawa religious party, then explained that just because killers wore police uniforms did not mean that they were policemen. He added helpfully: "A lot of thieves in Australia wear police uniforms - that doesn't mean that all policemen in your country are thieves."
IT HAS been a bad week in Iraq. Inevitably the Sunni families of al-Salam City will hear of the fate of their men, and in the meantime Sheik Fadal will wrestle with his limited options.
Publicly the local Shiite sympathise. But one of them was quick to justify the action of the death squads and what he perceived as a shift in the local balance of power.
He explained: "We have a saying - 'if a man is not scared of the punishment he might get, he'll do anything'. The Sunnis in our district will not respond now - they know the punishment and they are scared.
"Look into their eyes - you can see it."
SMH.com
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