Iraqi authorities said Wednesday that they have suspended an entire brigade of up to 1,200 police officers for suspected connections to mass kidnapping and murder.
The Ministry of Interior said it would recall and retrain the national police’s 8th Brigade, based in the capital, after witnesses reported that men wearing police uniforms were behind the kidnappings Sunday of 26 workers at a south Baghdad meat processing plant.
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Six of the workers later were found dead. One who had been shot and left for dead apparently crawled away to a military checkpoint, authorities said.
The decommissioning comes after street protests erupted at one of the police unit’s checkpoints in the capital, and U.S. military officials requested that one of the unit’s battalions be recalled.
“There is clear evidence that there was some complicity in allowing death squad elements to move freely, when in fact they were supposed to be impeding their movement, that perhaps they did not respond as rapidly when reports were made,” said Army Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq.
He said the Iraqi government had “lost trust and confidence in the division’s ability to serve the public due to their poor performance and alleged criminal wrongdoings.”
The decommissioning is the latest in a series of moves being undertaken by Iraqi and U.S. military authorities to combat the possible infiltration of insurgents or sectarian combatants into Iraq’s army and security services.
New Ministry of Health statistics released Wednesday show that 2,667 civilians died violently in September and 2,994 more were injured, a level consistent with the summer’s spike in violence. A substantial number of them fell victim to death squads, which often pull passersby off sidewalks, seize them from their homes or drag them out of their cars and take them to unknown locations. Their bodies usually are found with gunshot wounds and signs of torture.
Authorities said they have documented a near-record number of bomb attacks, including car bombs and roadside explosives.
To a growing degree, government and military officials fear that police and other security services may have links to corruption and sectarian violence. Since June, the Ministry of Interior has fired 1,700 officers for possible corruption, abuse of authority or other violations, a ministry spokesman said.
In the incident Sunday at the frozen-meat processing plant in the south Baghdad neighborhood of Amil, about half a dozen men claiming to be police officers entered and began asking employees for identification cards before ordering most of them into a truck and driving away.
At another location, the employees were beaten and then separated into Sunnis and Shiites, with the Shiites permitted to leave, according to a survivor who was interviewed by investigators from the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team.
A military source said the kidnappers asked one man, “Why are you working with these Sunnis?” before releasing him. All the shooting victims were Sunnis.
Shell casings found at the scene of the kidnapping match handguns carried by Iraqi police but differ from those most commonly used on the street, military investigators said.
Wednesday’s actions came after Army Lt. Col. John Norris, commander of the 172nd Stryker Brigade’s 23rd forward battalion, issued a request to decommission the first of the Iraqi unit’s three battalions.
U.S. military officials said the Ministry of Interior already had opened an investigation into possible connections or cooperation between the brigade and death squads operating in the capital and moved to decommission the unit after the protests and Norris’ request.
“The case that was building against the 8th Brigade of the Iraqi National Police that works in Amil was based on corruption, infiltration, complacency and possibly committing sectarian murders in their area of responsibility,” Norris said in an interview.
“They set up checkpoints throughout the town, they run patrols throughout their area of responsibility, so the question that begs to be answered is, why were they having such a spike in murders in their area?” he said.
Interior Ministry spokesman Alaa al-Taie said the decommissioning and retraining will allow the government to determine whether charges lodged against the police unit have any basis.
“Were there deficiencies and failures that resulted in the kidnapping of the 24, and is it true that there was cooperation between the police and the militias? This is what we hope to find out,” he said.
A report for the Council on Foreign Relations last year found there was widespread infiltration of security forces by insurgents, ranging from hard-core fighters who slip through the hiring checks to sympathizers who help militias and insurgents. Some police appear to help the insurgents out of intimidation and fear, the report said.
U.S. military officials said members of the 8th Brigade will be retrained by Iraqis under U.S. guidance, and some officers may lose their jobs or even face prosecution.
Al-Taie said authorities have not received any direct evidence that sectarian militias had infiltrated the police brigade, but he said the issue of infiltration is “natural” with a police force formed under conditions of chaos, constant threat and sectarian violence.
Separately, the U.S. military said four American soldiers patrolling in Baghdad were killed by gunmen Wednesday and two other soldiers were killed a day earlier in Baghdad and the northern city of Kirkuk, The Associated Press reported. The deaths brought to 21 the number of Americans killed in combat since Saturday.
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In all, car bombs and other violence killed 34 people across Iraq on Wednesday.