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Iraq

Iraq executes 13 militants by hanging

By wire services
Published March 10, 2006

BAGHDAD - The Iraqi government said 13 insurgents were hanged Thursday in the first executions of militants since capital punishment was reinstated in Iraq.

The Cabinet announcement listed the name of only one of those hanged, Shukair Farid, a former police officer in Mosul, who allegedly confessed that he had worked with Syrian foreign fighters to enlist fellow Iraqis to carry out assassinations against police and civilians.

Capital punishment was suspended during the formal U.S. occupation, which ended in June 2004, and the Iraqis reinstated the penalty two months later. The first executions of any convicts came in September, when Iraq hanged three murderers. The men, considered common criminals rather than insurgents, were convicted of killing three police officers, kidnapping and rape.

Death sentences must be approved by the three-member presidential council headed by President Jalal Talabani, who opposes capital punishment. In the September executions and again in the Thursday hangings, Talabani refused to sign the authorization but gave his two vice presidents the authority.

BAGHDAD - The U.S. military said Thursday it would begin moving thousands of prisoners out of Abu Ghraib prison within three months and hand the notorious facility over to Iraqi authorities as soon as possible.

Abu Ghraib is known as the site where U.S. soldiers abused some Iraqi detainees and, earlier, for its torture chambers during Saddam Hussein's rule.

The sprawling facility on the western outskirts of Baghdad will be turned over to Iraqi authorities once the prisoner transfer to Camp Cropper and other U.S. military prisons in the country is finished. The process will take several months, said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a U.S. military spokesman.

Abu Ghraib currently houses 4,537 out of the 14,589 detainees held by the U.S. military in the country. Iraqi authorities also hold prisoners at Abu Ghraib, though it is not known how many.

WASHINGTON - Dealing with a civil war in Iraq would be the responsibility of Iraq's own security forces, at least initially, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Congress on Thursday.

Testifying before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Rumsfeld said he did not believe Iraq would descend into all-out civil war, though he acknowledged that sectarian strife had worsened.

Gen. John Abizaid, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, told the committee that the situation in Iraq had evolved to the point where Sunni-Shiite violence was more of a threat to U.S. success there than the insurgency.

Rumsfeld previously had been reluctant to say what the U.S. military would do in the event of civil war.

He did not elaborate on the implication of his remark: that at some point the Iraqi security forces might be overwhelmed by a civil conflict and ask the Americans to get involved militarily.

BAGHDAD - The Sunni-owned security company where about 50 employees were kidnapped Wednesday was under investigation for allegedly collaborating with the antigovernment insurgency, an Interior Ministry official said Thursday.

Maj. Gen. Mehdi Sabih Hashem al-Garawi, commander of a paramilitary police unit, said his investigators had been examining al-Rawafid Security Co.

The company was also operating without a license, which was canceled last year, according to ministry documents.

No one has claimed responsibility for the assault, and the whereabouts of the workers remains a mystery.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. - A federal jury Thursday ordered military contractor Custer Battles to pay nearly $10-million in damages and penalties for defrauding the government on its work in Iraq.

The jury's decision followed a contentious three-week trial featuring charges that Custer Battles used fake invoices, forgery and shell companies in the Cayman Islands to run up millions of dollars in profits.

ATTACKS IN BAGHDAD: A series of explosions rocked Baghdad on Thursday, including a car bomb that struck a Sunni mosque and a shooting that killed a total of 17 civilians. The U.S. military reported the death of another Marine, killed Wednesday in insurgency-ridden Anbar province.

REGIME MEMBERS RELEASED: An Iraqi Justice Ministry official said the U.S. military had released two senior members of Saddam Hussein's former regime after finding they were not involved in crimes against humanity. Abdel Tawab Mullah Huweish, a former deputy prime minister and minister of military industrialization, and Saeed Abdul-Majid al-Faisal, former Foreign Ministry undersecretary, were released Feb. 23, said Justice Ministry official Busho Ibrahim Ali. Huweish was one of the 55 most-wanted members of Hussein's regime.

DATE SOUGHT FOR PARLIAMENT: Shiite politicians said they asked President Jalal Talabani to convene Parliament on March 19, one week past the constitutional deadline.

Information from the Associated Press and New York Times was used in this report.

[Last modified March 10, 2006, 02:00:16]