Officer's tale: Iraq's web of assassination

In some cases, names were marked "93," a number Abu Sakkar says meant that a person had been killed after an interrogation.

As he talks of the killings now, Abu Sakkar's trembling finger runs down to the name of one of several notorious state assassins - Salim Mohammed Jabber al-Hamouri - who is praised by his superiors in the same file, found among hundreds.

For his willingness to comply with orders, the murderous Mr. Hamouri was given a presidential medal, the file notes.

Only weeks ago, before undergoing secret training himself as a potential assassin of US and British troops, Abu Sakkar was making his regular rounds in Saddam City, a poor Shiite stronghold in Baghdad, listening to the sermons of senior imams and ayatollahs to make sure they praised the "great leader," Saddam Hussein.

"This was my job for the last four years in 'Section 5,' " he says now. "If they did not praise Saddam, the religious leaders were treated as political opponents."

"When the imams defied Saddam, they would be kidnapped along with their families - often on Friday night after prayers," he says. "My direct boss was Saad al-Ethawi, a Sunni, who absolutely detested Shiites."

When Shiites, both leaders and young religious students, were taken into custody, they were often transported to jail houses like the one Abu Sakkar visited with The Monitor Tuesday to retrieve files.

Even as unarmed Iraqi police officers objected and tried to stop him he pushed ahead and dug for files then passed them to the reporter to tuck away and remove from the premises.

"The method of the investigations was usually to hang someone upside down and beat them, hammering hard on their bones," he says, pointing to a hook on the ceiling that he claims prisoners were hanged from. "Some people would be left here for days upside down and would just die of fatigue and thirst."

"I visited mosques in order to report back to my boss on what was being said. I took notes, but I would do my best to try not to tell the entire story about what was going on in these Shiite neighborhoods."

In 2000, Abu Sakkar was caught underreporting and sent for two months to "Tourist Island" on the Tigris river, south of Baghdad, in order to receive a crude brand of re-education.

"Three of my fellow Shiites were shot in front of me," he says, adding that he saw his treatment on the island as a way for the government to try to "toughen me up." When Abu Sakkar returned to his work with the police campaign to put down Shiite opponents and rebels, he bore witness to even more savagery.

"One day I walked into the station and the room of the interrogation office was wide open," he says. "I saw Captain Abbas, one of our men, beating a man on the floor. I recognized him as a Shiite religious student. He beat the man on the head and I noticed and pointed out to the captain that the student was already dead. He just said that he wanted to punish him more and that he was wielding the 'hand of Allah.' "

Later, he was also present when secret police executed two other students from Mustafa High School in front of their families.

One of Abu Sakkar's Shiite co-workers was ordered to kill a top imam in Saddam City in the year 2000.

"He killed the imam, Abdul Zahra al-Kabi, and his rank in our department was raised. He was rewarded with three new cars. I think he did this because he was a weak man with very little self-respect. He just wanted a higher position."

Abu Sakkar, who managed for four years to avoid the call up for assassin duty, finally went through a training course late last year to kill British and American soldiers.

He was actually given a supervisory role in a training course for foreign Arab fighters who came to Baghdad to fight US and British forces.

"We were trained to ambush and kill American forces in Baghdad," he says. "The government wanted unmarried people like myself, and we were chosen by Abbas al-Dulami, the police chief. They told us not to talk about the course with anyone. When the war started, we were taken to the camps with these Arab fighters, but they had been told not to talk to us. Some of them were being trained for operations outside Iraq."

The young officer, curious as to whom he had been sent to work with, asked a more senior Iraqi intelligence officer present at the time, who the strangers were. He was told that they were members of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization, he says, though his report could not be confirmed.

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