Active Unit News

U.S. Clamps Down On Iraqi Resistance
180 Held in Raids; Elections Approved
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, July 1, 2003; Page A01

BAGHDAD, June 30 -- U.S. forces detained 180 people today, including an Iraqi colonel, in raids in Baghdad and areas north of the capital aimed at squelching resistance activity, military officials said. To the south, troops arrested the U.S.-appointed mayor of Najaf on charges of kidnapping and corruption, according to the U.S.-led occupation authority, which now intends to let its local military commanders hold elections to select interim town councils and provincial governors. In today's sweeps, soldiers from the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division continued an operation dubbed Sidewinder in an arc of territory north of Baghdad, conducting eight raids and detaining 32 people, the military said. In a statement, U.S. Central Command said one of those nabbed was a Baath Party colonel. A U.S. official here said the man, who was not immediately identified, was a colonel in either the army or the intelligence service and had a senior post in ousted president Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, which did not use military rankings. He was seized with five others, eight AK-47 rifles, other weapons and 8 million Iraqi dinars, or about $6,000, the military said. In Baghdad, soldiers from the 1st Armored Division detained 148 people in "raids, search operations, checkpoint operations, presence patrols and a river operation," Central Command said. The military also said a wave of military police patrols across the country resulted in the arrest of another 319 Iraqis on Sunday and today for various criminal activities. The military did not say whether U.S. forces encountered resistance in the raids in Baghdad and to the north, but a U.S. official said the soldiers met minimal opposition. The raids, which involved thousands of troops, are intended to be strategic and symbolic by using a massive display of military power to intimidate resistance fighters and flush out people who have been attacking U.S. soldiers. But the lack of strong resistance suggested that the troops had not discovered any significant cells of fighters loyal to Hussein. Clamping down on increasingly deadly resistance activity has become the immediate goal of the military operation. Since President Bush declared major combat in Iraq over on May 1, U.S. troops have been subjected to scores of attacks that have killed 23 military personnel. The northern operation began early Sunday with 23 raids that resulted in the detention of 61 people. Many of the raids occurred near the town of Samarra, about 70 miles northwest of Baghdad, in a region the military has said was "the nexus of paramilitary activity in central Iraq" and a base of support for Hussein's toppled government. U.S. forces' handling of prisoners came under fire today in a report issued by the London-based rights group Amnesty International. The group said it had evidence that the U.S. military violated international law by subjecting Iraqi prisoners to "cruel, inhuman or degrading" conditions at Iraqi detention centers. Hundreds of Iraqis held at U.S.-run tent camps and other facilities have been denied the right to see their families, consult with attorneys or have a judge review their detention, according to the report. Officials with the occupation authority said improvements were being made to the detention centers, which were hastily set up after Hussein's government fell April 9. Even so, one official insisted that the authority was "more than complying with our obligations under the Geneva Convention." Another official said provisions would be made for people detained for non-war crimes to consult with attorneys and see their families. But those being held as prisoners of war, which include people on a U.S. list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis, would not necessarily be eligible for family visits and some other privileges accorded to ordinary criminals, the official said. Meanwhile, in Najaf, about 100 miles south of Baghdad, U.S. forces arrested Abdul Munim Abud, a former army colonel who was named acting mayor over two months ago by the U.S. military. Abud, who was detained with 61 of his aides, was charged with kidnapping, stealing government funds, attacking a bank official and pressuring government employees to commit financial crimes, an official with the U.S.-led occupation authority said. The official said Abud was arrested on the recommendation of a local investigating judge and a special prosecutor, who were asked by the U.S. commander in Najaf to examine the allegations after they were brought to the military's attention. The judge and the prosecutor have uncovered "a large amount of evidence from a number of people and, based on that they concluded there was sufficient evidence to warrant arrest," the official said. Officials with the occupation authority did not provide details about the crimes Abud is alleged to have committed. Abud, a Sunni Muslim, has been a controversial figure in Najaf, an overwhelmingly Shiite city. Residents have held several demonstrations urging U.S. troops to replace Abud, whom they have accused of having links to the Baath Party and of not being representative of the city's Shiite majority. Abud, who presented himself to U.S. forces as a well-connected and skilled administrator, was appointed by the military commander in Najaf shortly after U.S. troops established control of the city in April. Although the move angered a conclave of clerics in Najaf who are the spiritual leaders of Iraq's Shiites, U.S. military officials had refused to remove him. "We've always said we'll make mistakes as this process goes on," the official with the occupation authority said. "Given how he's behaved, it was a mistake." Abud will be replaced by his deputy, Haydar Mahdi Mattar Mayali, until a new mayor is selected. The occupation authority plans to allow a caucus of 22 residents -- deemed to be respected by and representative of the city's population -- to select an interim city council, which would name the new mayor. U.S. military officials in the city had recently scheduled elections, but canceled them after it became clear that Shiite political parties opposed to the U.S. presence in Iraq would probably garner a majority of votes. The decision to cancel the elections and to retain Abud prompted protests in the city. The official said today that U.S. and British commanders across Iraq have been informed by the civil administrator, L. Paul Bremer, that they can form city councils and select interim provincial governors in one of three ways: local elections, caucuses or outright appointment by the commander. The decision to allow commanders to hold elections reverses a controversial ban on voting because of concern that members of the Baath Party and Muslim fundamentalists might win in some areas. "The aim of the coalition is to bring the maximum amount of Iraqi input into the governing process," the official said. But in Najaf, Iraq's most senior Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, condemned a key element of the U.S. plan to form a new Iraqi government. Sistani issued an edict on Saturday rejecting a constitutional council handpicked by the U.S.-led occupation authority, calling it "fundamentally unacceptable." He said Iraqis should elect the drafters of their constitution. "There is no guarantee that the council would create a constitution conforming with the greater interests of the Iraqi people and expressing the national identity, whose basis is Islam and its noble social values," Sistani said in his edict, or fatwa, which was dated Saturday but posted on his Web site today. Sistani called for elections to pick delegates to a constitutional convention and a referendum to approve any constitution it draws up. The cleric, the single most influential religious voice among Iraq's Shiite majority, rarely involves himself in politics but has indicated a growing unease with the U.S. presence in Iraq. In the city of Haditha, 125 miles northwest of Baghdad, a group of Iraqis scavenging for scrap metal at an ammunition depot accidentally set off an explosion on Saturday, killing an estimated 25 civilians and injuring six more, according to local officials and police. The blast, inside a warehouse at a remote site 20 miles outside the city of 120,000, triggered a fire that left some of the victims burned beyond recognition. Only nine bodies have been recovered from the rubble, according to the local police captain, Khudeir Mohammed Sael. "We really don't know exactly how many died, but about 25," Sael said. Sael said the recovery operation was going slowly because of a lack of equipment and the fear of more unexploded ordnance in the rubble. The army depot, abandoned after the war, contained thousands of artillery shells and other munitions, which the civilians were disassembling to sell as scrap metal.
Finn reported from Haditha.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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