Sadr's militia tightens grip on healthcare

This man says a separate group of friends - Sunni Arabs - were all rounded up at the morgue when they went to collect a relative, hooded and taken to an interrogation center where they were tortured and questioned for a day. Fortunately for them, he says, another family member had a good contact close to Sadr, who arranged for their release.

The creation of the FPS in late 2003 by the US, as it sought to protect Iraqi infrastructure and government facilities from insurgent attacks, appears to have provided a back-door for militia infiltration into even those ministries - such as Health - without any obvious security duties.

In early May, outgoing Interior Minister Bayan Jabr Solagh said commandoes under his control had been unfairly accused of running death squads, and said most of the blame lies with the FPS. His party, SCIRI, and the Sadr movement are heated rivals.

Mr. Solagh's ministry pointed to a joint US-Iraqi raid that freed seven of 10 men abducted from Khan Bani Saad, a Sunni town north of Baghdad, and found that some of the abductors were Shiites with Ministry of Health FPS badges.

A senior Sadr official, Sheikh Abbas al-Zubaydi, confirms the incident, but says its meaning was distorted. "There was a fight in that town between the terrorists and the innocent residents. Our people went to help, and captured some of the criminals,'' he says. "They were there doing their duty - I wish I could have been there myself."

Today at the Health Ministry, the protection of its security services seems to extend far beyond checking visitors for weapons or suicide vests.

What until late 2005 used to be a routine reporting visit to the morgue - the best way to figure out the level of violent death in Baghdad - has now become a minefield of frustration and implied threat.

After a person picks up a permission letter from the bureaucrat at the ministry public affairs office, he presents it to the morgue director's secretary. But now, she immediately directs the person to go to the compound's security office. "The director is in, but you have to talk to Major Kassem first." Why? "You just have to."

Going back outside, Major Kassem is tracked down inside a small air-conditioned trailer. He has a broad smile, and no uniform or badge.

Asked what his role is he explains: "I work for the Interior Ministry, but I've been assigned here to help coordinate the FPS."

He then explains that there's no need to speak to ministry officials, that he will provide all available information. He gives the monthly murder totals from the beginning of the year, though UN officials and Sunni Arab politicians say the ministry has taken to under-reporting the numbers, under pressure from Shiite militias.

Asked if a visit to the morgue proper is possible, Kassem says he would advised against it. "Who knows, if you go there someone might shoot you in the back."

The whole compound can be a dangerous place, he says. He asked if his visitors had seen the middle-aged Iraqi sitting on a chair when they had arrived. "Well, he's a dangerous terrorist and we just arrested him."

The man was neither cuffed nor had weapons trained on him. Kassem explains that he had come to claim the body of a relative killed in Dora, a violent Sunni neighborhood, and that was how he was caught.

"His brother was killed attacking the police yesterday in Dora, and when he came looking for the body, we caught him," he says.

Asked how he knows the man is guilty, he answers: "Oh, we know these things."

Omar al-Jiburi, the head of the human rights office at the Iraqi Islamic Party, a major Sunni Arab political group, alleges violence by Shiite militias at the morgue and Baghdad hospitals has become commonplace. He claims that 275 Sunni Arabs have been killed or kidnapped at health facilities since the beginning of the year.

"You might say it's Mahdi Army. But the ministries themselves have militias embedded inside them now. They have badges and official salaries. So I'm not sure what you should call them."

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