http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-corrupt9jul09,0,4624759.story?coll=la-home-headlines
From the Los Angeles Times

Iraq Police Force Rife With Abuse, Documents Say
By Solomon Moore
Times Staff Writer

7:22 PM PDT, July 8, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Brutality and corruption are rampant in Iraq's police force, with abuses ranging from the widespread rape of female prisoners and the release of terrorism suspects in exchange for bribes to assassinations of police officers and participation in insurgent bombings, according to confidential Iraqi government documents detailing more than 400 police corruption investigations.

A recent assessment by U.S. State Department police-training contractors underscores the investigative documents, concluding that strong paramilitary and insurgent influences within the force and endemic corruption have undermined public confidence in the government.

Officers also have beaten prisoners to death, been involved in kidnapping rings, sold thousands of stolen and forged Iraqi passports and passed along vital information to insurgents, the Iraqi documents allege.

The documents, which cover most of 2005 and part of 2006, were obtained by the Los Angeles Times and authenticated by current and former police officials. The alleged offenses span dozens of police units and hundreds of officers ranging from beat cops to generals and police chiefs. Officers were punished in some cases, but the vast majority of offenses are either still under investigation or were dropped due to lack of evidence or witness testimony.

The investigation documents are the latest in a string of disturbing revelations of abuse and corruption by Iraq's Interior Ministry, a massive, Cabinet-level agency that employs 268,610 police, immigration, facilities security and dignitary protection officers.

After the discovery last November of a secret Interior Ministry detention facility in Baghdad operated by police intelligence officials affiliated with a Shiite Muslim militia, U.S. officials declared 2006 "the year of the police." They vowed a renewed effort to expand and professionalize Iraq's civilian officer corps.

President Bush has said that the training of a competent Iraqi police force is linked to the timing of an eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops and a key element in the war in Iraq.

But U.S. officials say the renegade force in the ministry's intelligence service that ran the bunker in Baghdad's Jadiriyah neighborhood continues to operate out of the Interior Ministry building's seventh floor. A senior U.S. military official in Iraq, who was interviewed last month on condition of anonymity, confirmed that one of the leaders of the renegade group, Mahmoud al-Waeli, is the "minister of intelligence for the Badr Corps" Shiite militia and a main recruiter of paramilitary elements for interior police forces.

"We're gradually working the process to take them out of the equation," the military official said. "We developed the information. We also developed a prosecutorial case."

Bayan Jabr, a prominent Shiite, was interior minister at the time of the investigations detailed in the documents and has been accused of allowing Shiite paramilitaries to run rampant in the security forces under his watch.

U.S. officials interviewed for this article said the ability of Jabr's replacement, Jawad Bolani, to deal with the pervasive corruption and militia influence in the police will be a crucial test of his leadership.

The massive challenges facing Bolani, a Shiite engineer who has no policing experience and entered politics for the first time after the U.S.-led invasion of 2003, are highlighted in a recent assessment by police trainers hired by the State Department. According to the report, corruption in the Interior Ministry has hampered its effectiveness and its credibility with Iraqis.

"Despite great progress and genuine commitment on the part of many ministry officials, the current climate of corruption, human rights violations and sectarian violence found in Iraq's security forces undermines public confidence," according to the document, titled "Year of the Police In-Stride Assessment, October 2005 to May 2006."

"Elements of the MOI have been co-opted by insurgents, terrorists and sectarian militias. Payroll fraud, other kinds of corruption and intimidation campaigns by insurgent and militia organizations undermine police effectiveness in key cities throughout Iraq," the report said.

The report increased tensions between the Pentagon, which runs the police-training program, and the State Department, which has been pushing to expand its limited training role in Iraq, said a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The report strikes contradictory tones, claiming that the Interior Ministry continues to improve and that its forces are on track to take over civil security from U.S. and Iraqi military elements by the end of the year, while outlining shocking problems with corruption and abuse.

Interior officials have taken steps to "improve detainee life," the report said. "However, there are elements within the MOI which continue to abuse detainees."

"MOI officials and forces are widely reported to engage in bribery, extortion and theft," the report said. "For example, there are numerous credible reports of ministry and police officials requiring payment from would-be recruits to join the police."

The report's findings are borne out in hundreds of pages of internal investigative documents.

The documents include worksheets with hundreds of short summaries of alleged crimes by police, letters referring accused officers to Iraq's anticorruption agencies and courts, citizen complaints of police abuse and corruption, police inspector general summaries detailing financial crimes and fraudulent contracting practices and reports on alleged sympathizers of Saddam Hussein's former regime.

In crisp bureaucratic Arabic, the documents detail a police force where abuse and death at the hands of policemen is frighteningly common.

Police officers' loyalties appear to be a major problem, with dozens of accounts of insurgent infiltration and terrorist acts committed by ministry officials.

In one case, a ring of Baghdad police officers -- including a colonel, two lieutenants and a captain -- were accused of stealing communications equipment for insurgents, who used the electronics for remote bomb triggers. In another case, a medic with the Interior Ministry's elite commando force in Baghdad was fired after he was accused of planting improvised explosives and conducting assassinations.

In Diyala province, where U.S. forces killed al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi last month, investigators were looking into allegations that a police officer detonated a suicide vest in the bombing of a police station, and in a separate case, a brigadier general, a colonel and a criminal judge were accused of taking bribes from a suspected terrorist.

Police officers have also allegedly organized kidnapping rings that abduct civilians for ransom -- in some of the cases, the victims are police officers. Two Baghdad police commanders kidnapped a lieutenant colonel, stole his ministry car and demanded tens of thousands of dollars from the victim's family, the documents allege. In that case, the two accused, Maj. Gen. Naief Abdul Ezaq and Capt. Methaq Sebah Mahmoud, were fired and taken to court.

The abbreviated notes on the case do not make clear whether the two officers received further punishment, but the fact that the documents mention the courts being involved in the incident at all makes it stand out from the rest of the cases.

In another case, the bodyguards of a police colonel in the Zayonah neighborhood of Baghdad kidnapped merchants for ransom, according to the documents. And in the capital's Ghazaliya neighborhood, a lieutenant and his brother-in-law kidnapped a man and demanded $18 million from his family.

Police abuse is also a common theme in the documents. The victims include citizens who tried to complain about police misbehavior, drivers who disobeyed traffic police commands and, in several cases, other police officers.

But detainees appear to be targeted most often. The U.S. military has been working with the Iraqi government to standardize detention facilities and policies, and the U.S. assessment claimed that several site visits turned up no serious human-rights abuses. But the ministry documents reveal a brutal detention system in which officers run hidden jails and torture and detainee deaths are common.

The documents mention four investigations into the deaths of 15 prisoners killed by police commando units.

In the Rusafa area of Baghdad, a predominantly Shiite area known for its strong militia presence, police tortured detainees with electricity, beatings and, in at least one case, anal rape, according to the internal documents. Relief was reserved for those detainees whose relatives could afford to bribe detention officers to release them.

The Wolf Brigade, a notorious commando unit, illegally detained more than 650 prisoners, according to the documents. During a mass release of Wolf Brigade prisoners last November, a Los Angeles Times reporter saw dozens of malnourished men among the released detainees; several of them were so weak that they could not walk without assistance.

Female detainees are often subject to sexual assault, the documents allege. In August, the commander of a detention center in the Karkh neighborhood of the capital allegedly raped a woman who was an alleged insurgent. Also in August, two lieutenants allegedly tortured and raped two other detained women.

U.S. officials say they have known about Interior Ministry abuses for years but have done little to thwart them, choosing instead to push Iraqi leaders to solve their own problems.

"The military had been at the bunker prior to the raid in November," said the U.S. official, referring to the Jadiriyah torture facility. "But they said nothing."

Some U.S. military leaders want American officials to have a stronger hand with the Interior Ministry, arguing that continuing corruption and militia influence are dashing any hope for a speedy American withdrawal from Iraq.

Another senior military official in Iraq with knowledge of the police-training effort said that U.S. policy in regard to the ministry is confused and disengaged. The official, who asked not to be identified because his comments impugned his superiors, said that the Pentagon and the State Department have failed to coordinate their efforts and are too disengaged from the Iraqi police leaders.

"They sit up there on the 11th floor of the ministry building and don't talk to the Iraqis," the official said of U.S. police trainers assigned to the Interior Ministry headquarters tower. "They say they do policy and (that) it's up to the Iraqis -- well, they're just doing nothing. The MOI is the most broken ministry in Iraq."