Iraqi police accused of handing over Shiites for slaughter

Dozens of Iraqis today accused Fallujah police of handing over Shiite truck drivers to Sunni extremists who slaughtered them after they sought refuge at a police station.

The anger erupted at a funeral service in Firdous Square for six Shiite drivers whose bodies were found at a morgue near the city yesterday.

Mourners said the men were delivering a load of tents to the Fallujah Brigade, a force that co-operates with the US military in the restive city, 40 miles from the capital, Baghdad.

On their way back to Baghdad, the drivers were stopped by armed men who identified themselves as mujahedeen fighters who battled Marines to a standstill in April.

The six drivers escaped and sought refuge in a police station, the mourners said. However, they were handed over to a hard-line Sunni cleric because they were Shiites, the mourners said.

They were killed after the men who were holding them, one of them a Syrian, demanded €2,400 a head, the mourners said. The families could not afford the ransom.

Colonel Adnan Abdul-Rahman, spokesman of the Interior Ministry, described the allegations against the police as ”baseless,” but confirmed that the killings took place in the Fallujah area.

If true, the incident raises new questions about the capability of the Iraqi police to handle security following the handover of sovereignty June 30.

A 12-year-old boy, Mohammed Khudeir, said he was among those allegedly handed over by the police. But the cleric and his followers let him go, apparently because of his age.

“We tried to seek police protection, but the policemen handed us over,” Khudeir said. He said the cleric “handed us over to a group of Arabs who spoke with non-Iraqi accents. I was tortured for a while, but then I was released.”

Khudeir’s brother and uncle were killed by the insurgents, he said.

One man, Alaa Mery, said he went to Fallujah to negotiate for the hostages’ release. He said he met with some Syrians who identified themselves as members of the extremist Wahhabist sect and said they were holding the drivers because they collaborated with the Americans.

The Syrians demanded the money which the families could not pay, he said.

“Fallujah clerics and people made a big fuss regarding Abu Ghraib torture, but now they are killing and mutilating Muslims,” Mery said, referring to the American abuse of Iraqis at the Abu Ghraib prison. “They are not resistance. They are a copy of Saddam.”