Iraqi officials: 6,002 bodies delivered to Baghdad's main morgue in 5 months
Iraq to Release Detainees in Bid to Ease Tensions
By JOHN F. BURNS
The New York Times
June 7, 2006
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 6 — Iraq's new government said Tuesday that it would release 2,500 detainees, nearly 10 percent of those held in Iraqi and American detention centers, and that it would adopt a "national reconciliation" plan to reintegrate former members of Saddam Hussein's ruling Baath Party into society.
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said the first 500 detainees would be released Wednesday, with others following in the next few days. An American military spokesman said the decision to free the detainees, the largest group to be released in the 38 months since the American-led invasion, had been agreed to in a joint review by Iraqi and American officials. He said those freed would not include any deemed "guilty of serious crimes such as bombings, torture, kidnapping and murder."
Mr. Maliki, in his third week in office, gave few details of the reconciliation program. But he compared it to South Africa's "truth and reconciliation" process in the 1990's, which, he said, "sent some criminals to the courts and reinstated other people in society after promising not to try and rebuild" the country's apartheid system. The Iraqi leader said his government's plan, like South Africa's, would involve a national commission, and others in Iraq's 18 provinces, that would work to "an agreed timetable and program."
At a news conference here, the 56-year-old prime minister drove home the carrot-and-stick approach he outlined in a visit last week to the southern oil city of Basra. There, he vowed to use "an iron fist" to crush Sunni Arab insurgents and sectarian militias terrorizing Basra, but promised that his government would rule in ways that would make a priority of rebuilding Iraq on the basis of justice for the communities of Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds now engaged in a bitter struggle for economic and political power.
On Tuesday, Mr. Maliki's focus was on the Sunni Arab minority that was the mainstay of Mr. Hussein's rule. "We are ready to turn a new page with those who so desire it, and we will respond with force to those who want to pursue violence," he said. "Those who want to end the bitterness of the past have the way open through the process of national reconciliation, but those who choose bloodshed will find us ready to deal with them."
The detainee release, though sweeping, seemed likely to fall far short of the demands of Sunni politicians who have joined in the uneasy partnership with the dominant Shiites in the new government, the first with a full, four-year tenure since Mr. Hussein's overthrow. The Interior Ministry said Tuesday that a total of 27,800 people were being held in Iraqi and American prisons across the country — a figure that included criminals and former Baathists as well as insurgents and members of their support network.
A spokesman for the American military command, Lt. Col. Keir-Kevin Curry, said there were about 14,500 detainees in the detention centers run by the American-led forces, including several thousand at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad.
Colonel Curry said the terms of the detainees' release included a pledge to renounce violence "and to be good citizens of Iraq." He added, "All of these detainees selected for release have been found to be relatively low threats."
Similar pledges have been made by other detainees released since Iraq resumed sovereignty after the formal period of American occupation ended two years ago, including a group of nearly 1,000 men who were freed from Abu Ghraib last August. Some of those have since been killed in clashes with American and Iraqi troops, or rearrested on suspicion of involvement in the insurgency. The August release was ordered as a concession to Sunni Arab leaders then engaged in tense negotiations with Shiite and Kurdish leaders over the new Constitution.
Mr. Maliki's message on Tuesday offered assurances to Shiites and Kurds who were Mr. Hussein's principal victims, and, implicitly, to American and Iraqi troops, who with Shiites have borne the brunt of the Sunni-led insurgency that has gripped the heartland of Iraq.
The detainees being freed, he said, "are not Saddamists, terrorists or people with the blood of the Iraqi people on their hands, but people who have committed certain mistakes, cooperated in a certain manner or played some kind of role" in Mr. Hussein's repression and what has followed.
But the Iraqi leader's emphasis on reconciliation, and the detainee releases, seemed to signal a breakthrough for American officials, who have been pressing hard for new measures to placate the Sunni Arab minority. In effect, Mr. Maliki's announcements signaled to Shiites, whose religious parties secured a dominant role in the government after last December's election, that there needs to be a softening in the "de-Baathification" process that has marginalized thousands of Sunni Arabs who worked in Mr. Hussein's government and armed forces.
Strongly backed by Shiite leaders, the process won eager backing from the American occupation authority after the 2003 invasion. But American officials have all but disavowed the process now, seeing it as one of the prime causes of Sunni discontent that feeds the insurgency.
"We know that there are a lot of Baathists who want to put the heavy burden of having joined this ugly party behind them," Mr. Maliki said, and the mechanism for their doing so would lie in the reconciliations commissions and the opportunity to pledge "not to return to the party and rejoin society."
In a move that underscored the tide of violence that has many Iraqis saying they preferred life under Mr. Hussein's harsh dictatorship, Iraq's Health Ministry confirmed figures on Tuesday that showed 6,002 bodies, most victims of violence, were delivered to Baghdad's main morgue in the first five months of this year.
The figure for May, 1,375, was more than double the figure for May last year. Morgue officials have said that as many as 20 of the daily average of more than 40 bodies that arrive every day, many of them blindfolded, with tied wrists and showing signs of torture, remain unclaimed.
On Tuesday, police reported at least 25 new victims, most of them in Baghdad and in Diyala Province, east and north of the capital, which has been the center of some of the most brutal sectarian killings involving Sunnis and Shiites in recent weeks.
The death toll in one of the most grisly recent attacks, in the village of Hadid, near the Diyala provincial capital of Baquba, rose to 17 on Tuesday when the police delivered nine severed heads to the Baquba morgue in the fruit boxes in which they were found in the village.
On Saturday, eight other heads were found in the village. Notes found with the bodies indicated that the victims were Sunnis killed in retaliation for the killings of five Shiites, four of them doctors, in a earlier attack.
On Sunday, 20 people traveling in two minibuses and a car were stopped on a highway near Baquba, pulled from their vehicles and shot. The victims included seven students on their way to final exams in the city. Mr. Maliki, at his news conference, spoke angrily of the "flood of blood" that had been spilled in similar attacks in and around Baghdad since he came to office.
He said his government had approved a plan for a security crackdown by Iraqi and American troops that would concentrate on Baghdad and Diyala, which he described as "a launching pad for terrorists and former regime elements," meaning Baathists, who use the province as a base for attacks in Baghdad.
His comments tallied with those of American military commanders, who have identified Baghdad, Diyala and Anbar Province, to the west of the capital, and particularly the provincial capital of Ramadi, where insurgents have mounted some of their boldest attacks of the war in the past month, as priorities in the next phase of the war.
Mr. Maliki's first weeks as Iraq's leader have been burdened by his failure to win approval from rival factions in the government for nominees to the cabinet's top security posts.
He told reporters that he would try again at a meeting of Parliament on Thursday, and that he would be submitting the same names — Farouk al-Araji, a Shiite who was an officer in Mr. Hussein's army until 1993, as interior minister, and Gen. Abdel Qader Mohammed Jassim, a Sunni who is a commander in the new army, as defense minister. Their names were to have been put to Parliament on Sunday, but disagreement within the government caused the session to be canceled.
By JOHN F. BURNS
The New York Times
June 7, 2006
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 6 — Iraq's new government said Tuesday that it would release 2,500 detainees, nearly 10 percent of those held in Iraqi and American detention centers, and that it would adopt a "national reconciliation" plan to reintegrate former members of Saddam Hussein's ruling Baath Party into society.
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said the first 500 detainees would be released Wednesday, with others following in the next few days. An American military spokesman said the decision to free the detainees, the largest group to be released in the 38 months since the American-led invasion, had been agreed to in a joint review by Iraqi and American officials. He said those freed would not include any deemed "guilty of serious crimes such as bombings, torture, kidnapping and murder."
Mr. Maliki, in his third week in office, gave few details of the reconciliation program. But he compared it to South Africa's "truth and reconciliation" process in the 1990's, which, he said, "sent some criminals to the courts and reinstated other people in society after promising not to try and rebuild" the country's apartheid system. The Iraqi leader said his government's plan, like South Africa's, would involve a national commission, and others in Iraq's 18 provinces, that would work to "an agreed timetable and program."
At a news conference here, the 56-year-old prime minister drove home the carrot-and-stick approach he outlined in a visit last week to the southern oil city of Basra. There, he vowed to use "an iron fist" to crush Sunni Arab insurgents and sectarian militias terrorizing Basra, but promised that his government would rule in ways that would make a priority of rebuilding Iraq on the basis of justice for the communities of Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds now engaged in a bitter struggle for economic and political power.
On Tuesday, Mr. Maliki's focus was on the Sunni Arab minority that was the mainstay of Mr. Hussein's rule. "We are ready to turn a new page with those who so desire it, and we will respond with force to those who want to pursue violence," he said. "Those who want to end the bitterness of the past have the way open through the process of national reconciliation, but those who choose bloodshed will find us ready to deal with them."
The detainee release, though sweeping, seemed likely to fall far short of the demands of Sunni politicians who have joined in the uneasy partnership with the dominant Shiites in the new government, the first with a full, four-year tenure since Mr. Hussein's overthrow. The Interior Ministry said Tuesday that a total of 27,800 people were being held in Iraqi and American prisons across the country — a figure that included criminals and former Baathists as well as insurgents and members of their support network.
A spokesman for the American military command, Lt. Col. Keir-Kevin Curry, said there were about 14,500 detainees in the detention centers run by the American-led forces, including several thousand at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad.
Colonel Curry said the terms of the detainees' release included a pledge to renounce violence "and to be good citizens of Iraq." He added, "All of these detainees selected for release have been found to be relatively low threats."
Similar pledges have been made by other detainees released since Iraq resumed sovereignty after the formal period of American occupation ended two years ago, including a group of nearly 1,000 men who were freed from Abu Ghraib last August. Some of those have since been killed in clashes with American and Iraqi troops, or rearrested on suspicion of involvement in the insurgency. The August release was ordered as a concession to Sunni Arab leaders then engaged in tense negotiations with Shiite and Kurdish leaders over the new Constitution.
Mr. Maliki's message on Tuesday offered assurances to Shiites and Kurds who were Mr. Hussein's principal victims, and, implicitly, to American and Iraqi troops, who with Shiites have borne the brunt of the Sunni-led insurgency that has gripped the heartland of Iraq.
The detainees being freed, he said, "are not Saddamists, terrorists or people with the blood of the Iraqi people on their hands, but people who have committed certain mistakes, cooperated in a certain manner or played some kind of role" in Mr. Hussein's repression and what has followed.
But the Iraqi leader's emphasis on reconciliation, and the detainee releases, seemed to signal a breakthrough for American officials, who have been pressing hard for new measures to placate the Sunni Arab minority. In effect, Mr. Maliki's announcements signaled to Shiites, whose religious parties secured a dominant role in the government after last December's election, that there needs to be a softening in the "de-Baathification" process that has marginalized thousands of Sunni Arabs who worked in Mr. Hussein's government and armed forces.
Strongly backed by Shiite leaders, the process won eager backing from the American occupation authority after the 2003 invasion. But American officials have all but disavowed the process now, seeing it as one of the prime causes of Sunni discontent that feeds the insurgency.
"We know that there are a lot of Baathists who want to put the heavy burden of having joined this ugly party behind them," Mr. Maliki said, and the mechanism for their doing so would lie in the reconciliations commissions and the opportunity to pledge "not to return to the party and rejoin society."
In a move that underscored the tide of violence that has many Iraqis saying they preferred life under Mr. Hussein's harsh dictatorship, Iraq's Health Ministry confirmed figures on Tuesday that showed 6,002 bodies, most victims of violence, were delivered to Baghdad's main morgue in the first five months of this year.
The figure for May, 1,375, was more than double the figure for May last year. Morgue officials have said that as many as 20 of the daily average of more than 40 bodies that arrive every day, many of them blindfolded, with tied wrists and showing signs of torture, remain unclaimed.
On Tuesday, police reported at least 25 new victims, most of them in Baghdad and in Diyala Province, east and north of the capital, which has been the center of some of the most brutal sectarian killings involving Sunnis and Shiites in recent weeks.
The death toll in one of the most grisly recent attacks, in the village of Hadid, near the Diyala provincial capital of Baquba, rose to 17 on Tuesday when the police delivered nine severed heads to the Baquba morgue in the fruit boxes in which they were found in the village.
On Saturday, eight other heads were found in the village. Notes found with the bodies indicated that the victims were Sunnis killed in retaliation for the killings of five Shiites, four of them doctors, in a earlier attack.
On Sunday, 20 people traveling in two minibuses and a car were stopped on a highway near Baquba, pulled from their vehicles and shot. The victims included seven students on their way to final exams in the city. Mr. Maliki, at his news conference, spoke angrily of the "flood of blood" that had been spilled in similar attacks in and around Baghdad since he came to office.
He said his government had approved a plan for a security crackdown by Iraqi and American troops that would concentrate on Baghdad and Diyala, which he described as "a launching pad for terrorists and former regime elements," meaning Baathists, who use the province as a base for attacks in Baghdad.
His comments tallied with those of American military commanders, who have identified Baghdad, Diyala and Anbar Province, to the west of the capital, and particularly the provincial capital of Ramadi, where insurgents have mounted some of their boldest attacks of the war in the past month, as priorities in the next phase of the war.
Mr. Maliki's first weeks as Iraq's leader have been burdened by his failure to win approval from rival factions in the government for nominees to the cabinet's top security posts.
He told reporters that he would try again at a meeting of Parliament on Thursday, and that he would be submitting the same names — Farouk al-Araji, a Shiite who was an officer in Mr. Hussein's army until 1993, as interior minister, and Gen. Abdel Qader Mohammed Jassim, a Sunni who is a commander in the new army, as defense minister. Their names were to have been put to Parliament on Sunday, but disagreement within the government caused the session to be canceled.
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