Iraq investigates more prisoner abuse Wednesday Nov 16 14:23 AEST
Another prisoner abuse scandal has erupted in Iraq with the discovery of more than 170 tortured and starving prisoners in a locked Interior Ministry bunker beneath Baghdad.
Many had been severely beaten. Some had been paralysed. Others had skin peeled off their bodies.
US officials deny any responsibility and Iraq's government has ordered an investigation, saying it is shocked by the horrific find.
Some human rights groups say Iraq's new security forces are routinely abusing and torturing detainees in ways reminiscent of those used by the notoriously brutal regime of Saddam Hussein.
The War in Iraq has cost the US Government over 2 billion dollars. No wonder they didn't have the immediate resources to respond to the Hurricanes that hit the New Orleans region just a short time ago. I do hope the US is getting more than 2 billion dollars worth of Oil out of this otherwise what a waste of money and humanity this little exercise has proven to be.
The money is nothing, they needed the "war business" to save their economy, look at how badly it is still doing even with 2 billions in war spending to stimulate it!
What it has cost them is over 2000 lives and over 10,000 serious injuries (IE pensions)
At least 75 worshippers have been killed in suicide attacks on two Shiite mosques in an eastern town near the border with Iran, the latest deadly strike by rebels on Iraq's majority religious group.
The attack today in the Shiite Kurdish town of Khanaqin, which came just hours after suicide bombers killed six people outside a Baghdad hotel, destroyed the two mosques, the interior ministry said, and left 90 people wounded.
The two suicide bombers, wearing explosives belts, blew themselves up in the midst of worshippers during Friday's weekly prayers in the two Shiite mosques, officials said.
The local authorities immediately imposed a curfew in Khanaqin, a majority Shiite Kurdish town 170 km from the capital, Baghdad. The attacks come less than a month ahead of the legislative elections due on December.
The attack was the latest in a line of bloody strikes against the Shiites since the al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Sunni, declared all-out war on the Shiites in mid-September.
2083 US Military Personel have been killed since the March 2003 Invasion. Who the hell thinks this country is going to be better off after the troops from other countries leave???
Sort of makes a mockery of the Iraqi's request that the US get out. . .they are their own worst enemy now. . . *can't believe they would bomb their own neighbours.*.
DEMOCRACY = Voters deciding by Poll on who will be the local member that "Big Business" will push around.
Suicide bomber kills 25 at Iraqi funeral Five U.S. soldiers killed in attacks north of Baghdad
Saturday, November 19, 2005 Posted: 2240 GMT (0640 HKT)
A man is rushed into a hospital Saturday after being injured when a suicide bomber struck a funeral.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A suicide car bomber struck a funeral ceremony Saturday evening north of Baghdad, killing at least 25 people and wounding 30 others, Iraqi police in Abu Sayda said.
The funeral was for the uncle of the sheikh who leads the city council in the town of Abu Sayda, near Baquba, 30 miles north of Baghdad. The sheikh was among the wounded. The family is Shia.
The attacker drove the car, packed with explosives, into the mourning tent in front of a house and detonated it as mourners were reading verses from the Quran, police said.
Sunni sheik, family members slain Hussein trial scheduled to resume Monday
Thursday, November 24, 2005 Posted: 0714 GMT (1514 HKT)
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Gunmen dressed as Iraqi troops stormed the home of a senior Sunni leader Wednesday, killing him, his three sons and a son-in-law, Iraqi police said.
Neighbors told authorities that at least 10 vehicles that appeared to belong to the Iraqi army stopped outside the western Baghdad house of Kadhim Sarheed Ali al-Dulami, a sheik of the Sunni al-Dulami tribe, before gunmen went inside the home and shot the men. The killings took place about 4 a.m. local time in the Hurriya neighborhood.
The Associated Press quoted an Interior Ministry official, Maj. Falah al-Mohammedawi, as identifying al-Dulami as the brother of a parliamentary candidate in the December 15 election.
Al-Mohammedawi also told the AP that government forces were not involved and that insurgents were the focus of the investigation.
"Surely, they are outlaw insurgents. As for the military uniform, they can be bought from many shops in Baghdad," he told the AP. "Also, we have several police and army vehicles stolen, and they can be used in the raids."
One of al-Dulami's sons was assassinated a month ago, a Sunni leader told CNN. The son's body was found in western Baghdad's Shulaa neighborhood.
Al-Dulami was chief of the Batta tribe, a branch of the al-Dulami tribe.
In other violence Wednesday, two mortar rounds exploded around 4 p.m. (8 a.m. ET) in central Baghdad, wounding at least three people, according to an official with the Baghdad emergency police.
One exploded near the Ministry of Justice on Haifa Street, the other near Mutthaf Square. Both were a few hundred meters apart.
Also Wednesday, unknown gunmen killed Radi Ismail Jouwad, the head of a battery company in northeastern Baghdad, as he was leaving his home at about 8 a.m., police said.
As U.S. President George W. Bush launches a renewed effort to gain public support for the Iraq war, a new poll finds most Americans do not believe he has a plan that will achieve victory.
But the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll also finds nearly six in 10 Americans said U.S. troops should not be withdrawn from Iraq until certain goals are achieved.
Asked about Bush's handling of the Iraq war, 54 percent said it was poor, while 44 percent thought he was doing a good job.
Those polled were split over whether they think a democratic government can be established in Iraq that won't be overthrown, with 47 percent saying that was likely and 49 percent saying it was not.
Fifty-four percent said they thought it is unlikely that Iraqi forces alone will be able to ensure security without U.S. help, and 44 percent said otherwise.
In separate incident, three soldiers die in traffic accident
Friday, December 2, 2005 Posted: 2301 GMT (0701 HKT)
Iraqi soldiers take position during a joint Iraqi-U.S. raid in Ramadi, Iraq, on Friday.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A roadside bomb killed 10 U.S. Marines and wounded 11 others on nighttime foot patrol Thursday near Falluja, and three other soldiers died Friday in a traffic accident, the military said.
Few details were available about Friday's wreck. The three U.S. soldiers killed were members of the National Guard's 48th Brigade Combat Team, according to a news release. The wreck is under investigation, the military said.
The bomb that killed the Marines on Thursday was "fashioned from several large artillery shells," a Marine Corps statement said.
11 Iraqi soldiers killed in ambush Attack follows deaths of 10 Marines as elections approach
Saturday, December 3, 2005 Posted: 2307 GMT (0707 HKT)
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Two days after a roadside bomb killed 10 U.S. Marines on patrol in Falluja, insurgents in Iraq on Saturday staged another deadly strike, killing 11 Iraqi soldiers in an ambush north of Baghdad.
Attackers wielding small arms and detonating roadside bombs struck in the late morning near Adhaim, a Diyala province town 62 miles north of the capital, a U.S. military official reported.
Friday, December 9, 2005 Posted: 1659 GMT (0059 HKT)
(CNN) -- A U.S. official said Friday that the United States still does not know if anything has happened to Ronald Schulz, an electrician taken hostage in Iraq.
"We have no information that anything happened to him," said the official, who asked not to be named. The official said he is familiar with the details of U.S. attempts to find and free Schulz.
There are six known U.S. hostages in Iraq, according to the State Department, which does not identify the hostages by name.
Schulz's family pleaded Thursday for his safe release, urging his abductors to communicate with the family "to discuss this matter at any time" after postings on the Internet said he had been killed.
Schulz, 40, an electrician who had been working in Iraq, was kidnapped by insurgents around November 25.
Video from a group called the Islamic Army in Iraq surfaced Tuesday showing Schulz sitting on a white plastic chair with his hands apparently tied behind his back.
The group demanded that jailed Islamic Army fighters be released and that compensation be paid to families in Iraq's hard-hit province of Anbar.
"Our family is aware that the Iraqi people have concerns regarding the U.S. government presence in their country. However, murdering Ron will not solve these issues," his sister, Julie Schulz, told reporters in his home state of North Dakota.
"Because Ron's life is in your hands and in order to secure his safe release, for which you are ultimately responsible, my family is willing to receive any communication to discuss this matter at any time. We respectfully request you to reach out to us through any media channel to discuss a safe release."
Several Islamic militant Web sites posted a claim Thursday from the Islamic Army in Iraq that it had killed "the American security consultant for the Housing Ministry," after the United States failed to respond to its demand for the release of Iraqi prisoners.
A similar claim was posted early Friday on a Web site known to be used by the Islamic Army. The claims cannot be independently verified by CNN.
State Department officials said Thursday they were trying to determine if the message is credible.
Julie Schulz said the family has heard no confirmation that her brother is dead.
"We're working on the assumption that he's alive," she said.
Schulz, a former Marine who grew up on a farm around Jamestown, North Dakota, was working in Iraq as an industrial electrician, a job that has previously taken him to the Philippines, China, Vietnam and other countries around the globe.
His sister said it came as a "surprise" this week when the family first learned of his abduction, because they didn't know he was in Iraq.
She added it was "typical" of her younger brother, who had recently moved to Alaska, not to tell the family when he went overseas.
She last spoke with him two months ago. She said she immediately knew it was her brother when she saw the hostage video earlier this week.
"It's just been a roller coaster. We've just been trying to take things as it comes," she said.
Schulz is the second American known to have been kidnapped in Iraq in recent weeks. The other American, Tom Fox, was abducted with three other Christian aid workers.
The group claiming responsibility for the kidnapping of Fox and the other three workers extended its deadline for their execution to Saturday. (Full story)
The State Department said Thursday that another American contractor working for the U.S. government was killed Wednesday night outside the Iraqi city of Kirkuk.
U.S. officials said it was not a hostage situation and the victim was not Schulz.
There was no word on the status of a German aid worker and a French engineer, who have also been kidnapped
An Iraqi court has handed down long jail terms to seven men, including four foreigners, for belonging to al-Qaeda in Iraq and taking part in attacks in Baghdad and Mosul, the Justice Ministry said.
US lawyers said this was probably the first prosecution for membership of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Led by Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the group has claimed responsibility for some of the bloodiest incidents in an insurgency pitting Sunni and foreign Arabs against the Shi'ite and Kurdish-led government and its US backers.
The four foreigners, from Syria, Algeria and Jordan, were each sentenced to 20 years in jail for attacks in Mosul. They were seized in a raid on a house on May 29 in the Anbar province of western Iraq, which is a hotbed of insurgent activity.
Two Iraqis were jailed for 10 years and a third for 15 years for attacks in Baghdad and for helping smuggle foreign fighters into the country.
Washington says foreigners are only a small percentage of the insurgency but are to blame for many of its suicide bombings. Marines have been fighting in Anbar all year to stop foreign militants crossing the border from Syria.
İAAP 2005
I had to say it surprised me that the judge had the backbone to do this. Bravo.
DEMOCRACY = Voters deciding by Poll on who will be the local member that "Big Business" will push around.
Thursday, December 15, 2005 Posted: 0030 GMT (0830 HKT)
TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has described the Holocaust as "a myth" and suggested that Israel be moved to Europe, the United States, Canada or Alaska.
The United States, Israel and the European Commission -- along with individual European countries -- have condemned the remark.
Ahmadinejad sparked widespread international condemnation in October when he called for Israel to be "wiped off the map."
Last week, he also expressed doubt about the killing by the Nazis of six million Jews during World War II, but Wednesday was the first occasion when he said in public that the Holocaust was a myth.
"They have invented a myth that Jews were massacred and place this above God, religions and the prophets," Ahmadinejad said in a speech to thousands of people in the Iranian city of Zahedan, according to a report on Wednesday from Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting.
"The West has given more significance to the myth of the genocide of the Jews, even more significant than God, religion, and the prophets," he said. "(It) deals very severely with those who deny this myth but does not do anything to those who deny God, religion, and the prophet."
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