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Iraqi police suspected in slaying americans { March 13 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54346-2004Mar12.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54346-2004Mar12.html
Iraqi Police Suspected In Slaying of Americans
By Sewell Chan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, March 13, 2004; Page A10
BAGHDAD, March 12 -- Four men suspected in the slaying of two Americans working for the occupation authority in Iraq appear to be active Iraqi police officers, U.S. officials said Friday.
The Americans, Fern L. Holland, 33, and Robert J. Zangas, 44, and Holland's Iraqi translator, Salwa Ourmashi, were shot dead around 6 p.m. Tuesday near Hilla, about 60 miles south of Baghdad. Shortly afterward, Polish troops apprehended six Iraqi men riding in the victims' car and discovered that four carried cards that identified them as police, officials said.
"Four of them had current and, we believe, valid Iraqi Police Service identifications," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a military spokesman, told reporters Friday. Kimmitt cautioned that it was too early to say definitively that the suspects were involved in the attack or that the attackers knew that their victims worked for the occupation authority.
The new evidence raised questions about the screening of Iraqi security forces, a key component of the U.S. strategy to give control of Iraq back to Iraqis. To speed the return home of U.S. troops in Iraq, military and security officials are attempting to establish five Iraqi security forces, including a national police force of 85,000 officers.
As of Friday, 2,827 had graduated from an eight-week training course for recruits without police experience; 12,422 who had been police officers under the government of Saddam Hussein had finished a three-week course.
But the demands associated with hiring, screening, training and outfitting those forces have posed frequent problems. Because Iraq does not have accurate census records and many criminal records are spotty or inaccurate, applicants are often hired on the basis of little more than a quick oral interview. In Baghdad, the Iraqi Interior Ministry, which oversees the police, found last winter that more than 200 officers in the new force already had been dismissed or had their pay cut for crimes that included theft, extortion and even kidnapping.
On Thursday, the top commander of U.S. ground forces in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, said he was "very concerned" about the possible penetration of guerrillas and insurgents into the new security forces. On Friday, however, other U.S. officials repeatedly defended the selection of police officers as "robust" and said that mistakes in the recruitment process were rare.
"While it is a robust vetting process, it is not perfect, as is to be expected not just only in the Iraqi security forces but in security forces around the world," said Daniel Senor, a spokesman for the occupation authority.
Noting that more than 150,000 Iraqis have joined the new services, Senor said that the vast majority were honest, law-abiding and committed to creating a democratic and peaceful country. Occurrences of crime and corruption have been "isolated incidents," he said: "They are exceptions. They are not the rule."
The FBI and Iraqi police are investigating the killings of the three occupation authority employees. The six people in detention are being interrogated, but there are no independent witnesses to the killings, officials said.
Investigators are trying to reconstruct the crime scene and are examining tire marks found there. Although initial reports stated that the victims were shot after they stopped at a makeshift checkpoint, Kimmitt said Friday that "they may have been chased or run off the road."
The three victims were driving without a military escort and in a vehicle not protected by armor. More than a dozen bullets hit the driver's side of the dark four-door sedan in which the victims were riding, a U.S. official said Friday.
The victims worked in the occupation authority's south-central regional office. Holland helped set up women's rights centers, and Zangas worked with Iraqi journalists.
[The Associated Press reported that a roadside bomb early Saturday in Hussein's home town of Tikrit killed two members of the Army's 1st Infantry Division and wounded four others.]
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
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