Forces Find No Hostages in Iraqi Town
MADAIN, Iraq – Iraqi security forces, backed by U.S. military, swept into a town south of Baghdad at dawn Monday but found no hostages despite reports that Sunni militants had kidnapped as many as 100 Shiites there.
Residents and Sunni clerics said the reports had been grossly exaggerated by government officials bent on re-establishing control in the lawless region the U.S. military has called the “Triangle of Death” because it has become a stronghold of the Sunni insurgency.
Meanwhile, Iraq’s most powerful Shiite bloc wants former leader Saddam Hussein put to death if he is convicted of war crimes by a special tribunal, and if the interim president won’t sign the execution order, he should resign, an alliance spokesman told The Associated Press on Monday.
“We feel he is a criminal. He is the No. 1 criminal in the world. He is a murderer,” said Ali al-Dabagh, a lawmaker from the Shiite clergy-led United Iraq Alliance. “He deserves a trial, and he should be subjected to the law and the court. Whatever the decision, everyone should follow it, even if the president says he cannot sign it.”
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani told the British Broadcasting Corp. on Monday that he likely would abstain from signing an execution order because of his opposition to the death penalty.
Talabani also told the BBC that the ongoing insurgency could be halted if Iraq used militias such as those consisting of Kurds and Shiite Muslims.
“In my opinion, Iraqi forces, the popular forces and government forces, are now ready to end the insurgency and end this terrorism,” he told the BBC.
In Madain, an AP photographer joined hundreds of police who entered the town, deploying on rooftops and moving in vehicles and on foot. There was no resistance and no captives were found in the agricultural town of about 1,000 families, evenly divided between Shiites and Sunnis.
National Security Minister Qassim Dawoud warned Parliament on Sunday of attempts to draw the country into sectarian war. Addressing legislators Monday, he pledged to “chase down terror everywhere.”
He said Iraqi forces had discovered rooms full of mines, ammunition and car-bombmaking equipment in Madain. Six completed car bombs were found and were being defused, he said. A number of suspected insurgents also were detained.
A correspondent for Al-Arabiya television, embedded with Iraqi forces, reported that six Iraqi police and special forces brigades participated in the Madain operation.
Fewer than 200 American troops were providing air cover, medical evacuation services and a quick reaction force, which would only be sent in if needed, the U.S. military said. Streets were largely deserted.
Iraqi police and special forces searched farms and orchards. At one farm, they found stolen cars, bomb-making equipment and instructions on how to use weapons, the AP photographer said.
The confusion over what happened in Madain illustrated how quickly rumors spread in a country of deep ethnic and sectarian divides. Poor telephone communications and the difficulty of traveling between towns because of daily attacks on the roads make it difficult even for government officials to establish facts.
A Defense Ministry official, Haidar Khayon, said early Sunday that Iraqi forces raided the town, freed about 15 Shiite families and captured five hostage-takers in a skirmish with light gunfire. He said there were no casualties in what was described as a tense standoff in which Sunni militants threatened to kill their Shiite captives if all other Shiites did not leave town.
By the end of the day, however, Iraqi officials had produced no hostages and Iraqi military officials and police who provided information about the troubles could not be reached for further details.
Sheikh Abdul Salam al-Kubaisi, a spokesman for the Association of Muslim Scholars, an organization of Sunni clerics, denied to Al-Jazeera television that hostages were taken.
The country’s most-feared insurgent group, al-Qaida in Iraq, also denied there had been any hostage-taking in a statement Sunday on an Islamic Web site known for its militant content. The group, headed by the Jordanian-born terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, said the incident was a fabrication by the “enemies of God” to justify a military attack on Madain aimed at Sunnis.
An Associated Press Television News cameraman toured the town Sunday morning and saw no signs of unrest. People were going about their business normally, shops were open and tea houses were full, he said. Residents contacted by telephone also said everything was normal.
On Thursday, Shiite leaders claimed Sunni militants had seriously damaged a town mosque in a bomb attack. The next day, the Shiites said, masked militants drove through town, capturing Shiite residents and threatening to kill them unless all Shiites left.
Shiite leaders and government officials initially estimated 35-100 people were taken hostage, but residents disputed that, with some saying they had seen no evidence any captives were taken.
Security forces began raiding sites Saturday in search of those abducted, Dawoud said.
On the issue of Saddam’s fate, Talabani told the BBC that signing a death warrant would go against his beliefs as a human rights advocate and opponent of capital punishment.
He said he may abstain from having to sign any such document and leave the decision to his two deputies.
“I personally signed a call for ending execution throughout the world. And I’m respecting my signature,” Talabani told the BBC.
Al-Dabagh, a member of the Shiite majority long oppressed under Saddam’s rule, said Saddam’s execution was not negotiable.
“This is something that cannot be discussed at all. If the court says he’s a criminal, we will follow it,” al-Dabagh said. “He (Talabani) is now the president, and he should follow the law. If he doesn’t want to sign it, then he should resign the presidency.”
Saddam and his top lieutenants will be tried before the Iraqi Special Tribunal established in late 2003. The tribunal has given no official dates for starting the trials, although national security adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie said recently that Saddam could be tried by Dec. 31.
The death penalty was reintroduced in Iraq in August 2004 for crimes including murder, endangering national security and drug trafficking. But it is only meant to be a temporary measure in the effort to stamp out the country’s insurgency.
Sunnis make up about 20 percent of Iraq’s estimated 26 million population but were dominant under Saddam. Since U.S.-led forces drove him from power two years ago, the disempowered Sunnis are believed to form the backbone of the ongoing insurgency, fearing a loss of influence to majority Shiites.
At least 33 people died over the weekend in insurgent violence, including four U.S. soldiers and a 28-year-old American aid worker identified as Marla Ruzicka, the founder of a group trying to determine the number of civilian casualties in Iraq.
On Monday, two Iraqi policemen were killed and six injured when a roadside bomb exploded as their two patrol vehicles drove through Basra in southern Iraq, police Capt. Alaa Hasan said.
Talabani told the BBC that Iraqi security forces could start replacing coalition troops soon if militias were used. The government has rejected offers by the Kurds to use tens of thousands of Peshmerga guerrillas and by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq to use its Badr brigade of fighters, the BBC reported.
“There is a kind of thinking inside the outgoing interim government that they must not use them,” Talabani said. “We cannot wait for years and years of terrorist activity because we haven’t enough government forces.”
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Associated Press reporters Jamie Tarabay, Qassim Abdul-Zahra and Sameer N. Yacoub in Baghdad contributed to this report.