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Terrorists are trying to play on sectarian sentiments { May 17 2005 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002277434_iraq17.html"These terrorists are trying to play on sectarian sentiments," he said.
Iraq's new defense minister, Saadoun Dulaimi, also blamed "terrorists" who wore military uniforms for carrying out the killings. But he said many Iraqis have been complaining about the behavior of their security forces in recent days and announced that henceforth Iraqi police and soldiers will be forbidden to raid mosques.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002277434_iraq17.html
Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - Page updated at 12:00 a.m.
Baghdad body count rises; sectarian violence blamed
By Liz Sly
Chicago Tribune
BAGHDAD, Iraq — As more bullet-ridden corpses surfaced in Baghdad yesterday, fears mounted that Iraq's violence is entering a sinister new phase of sectarian killings.
Sunni religious leaders said the dead men were Sunnis and accused Iraq's security forces, now controlled by the Shiite-led government, of carrying out the killings.
The bodies of 12 men, shot dead execution-style, were found in two separate locations in Baghdad, bringing to 25 the number of men found killed under similar circumstances in the capital over the weekend. Some had been blindfolded, most were found with their hands bound, and all had been shot in the head.
More than 50 corpses — some Shiite and some Sunni — have been found in and around Baghdad since Saturday.
Several of the bodies were found in the notorious Triangle of Death just south of Baghdad, where the Sunni-dominated insurgency has a long-standing practice of targeting Shiites.
Although Shiites have borne the brunt of the insurgent violence, they generally have refrained from retaliating, heeding the calls of their religious leaders to exercise restraint and allow the new Shiite-led government to tackle the insurgency.
In a sign of the growing concerns that the violence could spin out of control, renegade cleric Muqtada al-Sadr made a rare public appearance to urge Shiites not to take matters into their own hands.
"Any action targeting unarmed civilians is forbidden under any circumstances," al-Sadr told journalists at his home in Najaf, Iraq, the first time he has appeared in public since his rebellion against U.S. forces was suppressed last summer.
"All Sunnis cannot be held responsible" for the violence in Iraq, he said, blaming the United States for stirring up sectarian tensions.
"The occupiers are trying to sow division among the Iraqi people, but there are no Sunnis and Shiites. Iraqis are one," he said.
Most of the men killed in Baghdad were found in neighborhoods adjoining the Shiite slum neighborhood of Sadr City, a stronghold of support for Sadr.
The Association of Muslim Clerics, an influential hard-line Sunni group, said it had evidence that the "Wolf Brigade," a unit of police commandos controlled by Iraq's Interior Ministry, had been responsible for the killings, in collaboration with "militias," a veiled reference to the Badr Brigades, a Shiite militia that is known to have accompanied Iraqi security forces on missions in recent weeks.
The association "condemns these acts of state terror by the state security apparatus, which has authorized the actions of some armed militias to violate people's safety," the scholars said in a statement.
Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari rejected the charges.
"It is impossible that the government could have undertaken such actions," he said in Najaf, where he was visiting the senior Shiite religious cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
"These terrorists are trying to play on sectarian sentiments," he said.
Iraq's new defense minister, Saadoun Dulaimi, also blamed "terrorists" who wore military uniforms for carrying out the killings. But he said many Iraqis have been complaining about the behavior of their security forces in recent days and announced that henceforth Iraqi police and soldiers will be forbidden to raid mosques.
Although the allegations of security-force involvement in the killings could not be confirmed, they serve as an indication of the deep divide that has opened up between Shiites and Sunnis in the months since Iraqis voted in January's elections.
Sunnis largely boycotted the polls, surrendering the field to a Shiite coalition of mostly religious parties that won a majority of seats in the new national assembly and now dominates the government.
Meanwhile, the car bombings and suicide attacks that have become routine since the formation of the government late last month continued unabated, with reports of at least 15 people killed in various incidents.
Five people died in a suicide bombing near Iraq's border, at least two soldiers died in a twin car bombing in a Shiite district of Baghdad's Dora neighborhood, two people died when a mortar hit a campus of Baghdad's Mustansiriyah University, and two other roadside bombings aimed at Iraq's security forces killed six.
U.S. reservist guilty of abusing detainees
FORT HOOD, Texas — A military jury yesterday convicted Spec. Sabrina Harman on all but one of the seven charges she faced for her role in abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison.
A panel of four Army officers and four senior enlisted soldiers convicted Harman on one count of conspiracy to maltreat detainees, four counts of maltreating detainees and one count of dereliction of duty.
The 27-year-old reservist from Lorton, Va., was acquitted on one maltreatment count.
Her sentencing hearing was scheduled to begin today. Harman faces a maximum of 5 ½ years in a military prison.
She was depicted in several of the most notorious photos taken at Abu Ghraib in late October and early November 2003, and she is accused of taking other pictures.
Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company
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