Did Allawi shoot Iraqi prisoners? Iraqi PM denies reports in Australian newspapers about alleged killings.
by Tom Regan
The Australia n Broadcasting Corporation reports Monday that Iraq's Human Rights Minister Bakhtiyar Amin said he will investigate claims that Iraq's new Prime Minister Iyad Allawi killed six prisoners just days before he took office. Mr. Amin said he does not believe they are true.
The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age of Melbourne, two of Australia's top newspapers, ran the story about the alleged incident on Saturday, prompting a furious round of denials from Mr. Allawi's office, which said Allawi doesn't carry a gun and never visited the detention center in question.
Australian journalist Paul McGeough, who broke the story, and then left Iraq for Jordan because of safety fears, stood by his report.
In his report Saturday, Mr. McGeough quoted two unnamed witnesses who say they were at the prison southwest of Baghdad when Allawi pulled a pistol and "executed as many as six suspected insurgents ..." At least five of the prisoners shot were Iraqis, the witnesses said.
One of the witnesses claimed that before killing the prisoners - and they name three of the people alleged to have been executed - Dr. Allawi had told them he wanted to send a clear message to the police on how to deal with insurgents. "The prisoners were against the wall and we were standing in the courtyard when the Interior Minister said that he would like to kill them all on the spot. Allawi said that they deserved worse than death - but then he pulled the pistol from his belt and started shooting them," one of the witnesses said.
The Herald article also report that almost a dozen Iraqi policemen and four Americans from the Allawi's personal security team "watched in stunned silence" as the alleged event unfolded. Iraq's Interior Minister, Falah al-Naqib, is said to have looked on and congratulated Allawi when the job was done. The article also points out that the two witnesses quoted in the article supported Allawi's actions.
But in a sharp reminder of the Iraqi hunger for security above all else, the witnesses did not perceive themselves as whistle-blowers. In interviews with the Herald they were enthusiastic about such killings, with one of them arguing: "These criminals were terrorists. They are the ones who plant the bombs."
Newsweek reports that this allegation and others help create a "tough guy" image for Allawi, which play well in Baghdad, but could cause problems for the US, and wipe out one of the last reasons the US administration has left for justifying the war in Iraq - stopping human rights abuses.
Allawi himself denied all the accounts, that the Daily Telegraph of London said were based on "unsubstantiated claims of two anonymous Iraqis." And the Sydney Morning Herald reports Monday that the Australian government said it could find no evidence to back the claims, but also said that they considered the allegations a "serious" matter.
"We, as a country, know nothing about these allegations and we've checked with the Americans and the British, who also know nothing about these allegations," the spokesman said. "They're obviously quite serious allegations but there's no evidence to support them at this stage; none of the authorities in Iraq that we've been able to contact know anything about them. So really, the onus is on the people making these allegations to substantiate them and put them to the authorities for investigation."
Monday McGeough vigorously defended his original story in an interview with The Australian Associated Press.
"In an environment like Iraq it's very difficult to separate out what people are telling you from what they are hearing," he told the Nine Network [an Australian broadcaster]. "In these two cases, these two men sat before me. They spoke reluctantly, they spoke carefully and considerately. When I tested parts of their story they didn't suddenly provide information where none was available. They seem to me to be telling what they had seen, they were believable too. I had an independent set of Iraqi eyes and ears (of an interpreter) listening and watching on these interviews and that person, whom I have worked with for some time and who I trust, he found the stories believable."
In an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation over the weekend, McGeough was also asked how he could be so confident about the allegations in the face of such firm denials from Allawi. McGeough said he had "two solid eyewitness accounts," that were very detailed and were done separately, that "each witness was not aware the other had spoke" at the time, and that "contacted through personal channels rather than through the many political, religious or military organizations working in Baghdad that might be trying to spin a tale."
Although most American and British media ignored the story, an analysis on the Philly.com site of the Philadelphia Inquirer said if it proves to be true, "it could be the biggest blow yet to America's intervention in Iraq - bigger than the Abu Ghraib prison scandal or the failure to find weapons of mass destruction."
The story also prompted calls from several sources for an investigation. The Sunday Herald of Scotland reports that former British cabinet secretary and antiwar activist Robin Cook said it was "vital" that the Red Cross investigate the allegations to make sure they were "cleared up one way or another." And the Foreign Affairs spokesman for Australia's opposition said "Australia must seek assurances" from the US and Iraqi governments about the claims.
Iraq war blogger Paul Woodward, of The War in Context, said he believes McGeough's story is more solid than some of the evidence actually used by the US and Britain to "prove" its case to go to war with Iraq.
If George Tenet could build a "slam dunk" case for war on intelligence from single sources, some of whom the CIA never even interviewed, these allegations about summary executions at least warrant investigation. In this case the witnesses may include CIA employees, in which case, one assumes, neither the US government nor the media, would doubt the veracity of their accounts. US Ambassador [to Iraq] Negroponte says "this case is closed" but also implies it was never opened.
The New York Post reports these allegations are the latest in a series of rumors that have been circulating in Baghdad about Allawi. The Post says that some of the rumors may have been started by Allawi himself in order to inhance his reputation. In a web-only column on the Newsweek site, Christopher Dickey writes that, considering Allawi's past, we should not "pretend he's a nascent democrat."
Allawi is best understood as the anointed dictator in waiting. His job is to do whatever needs doing to impose order on the current chaos. Martial law, ruthless repression, you name it. With American firepower to back him up, he's more than ready to take the blame for any rough stuff.
Meanwhile, The New York Times reports decisions taken by Allawi over the weekend illustrated his new strategy of "taming the deadly insurgency by making concessions to fighters who cooperate and cracking down on those who do not." Sunday he reopened the newspaper of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Former Coalition Provisional Authority head Paul Bremer had closed the paper earlier in the year, an action that many Iraqis believed led to Mr. Sadr's militia attacking US forces.
Newsday reports that Allawi also approved an air strike by US forces Sunday that killed 14 people, including women and children.