Convoy of Civilians Hijacked in Iraq
Friday November 17, 2006 2:46 AM
AP Photo BAG127
By BASSEM MROUE
Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - The Pentagon said a convoy of civilians
traveling
near Nasiriyah was hijacked on Thursday, while earlier in the day
the
Shiite-led Interior Ministry issued an arrest warrant for the top
leader of the country's Sunni minority. The move was certain to
inflame already raging sectarian violence.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said preliminary reports suggested
there could be as many as 14 people captured and that the convoy
included about 19 vehicles.
An official familiar with the incident said preliminary reports
being
checked by the military indicated that the attack occurred at a
checkpoint near Nasiriyah and that four Americans were believed to
have been taken captive.
The official, who requested anonymity because of the security
situation in Iraq, said it appears that some of the convoy drivers
had
been released, and were being interviewed by the military. He said
initial reports suggest that the attack occurred at a checkpoint in
a
location where normally there is no blockade.
The convoy was being operated by the Crescent Security Group. The
company works mostly in Iraq, and its operations are based in
Kuwait.
Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani, a Shiite, announced Thursday on
state television that Harith al-Dhari was wanted for inciting
terrorism and violence among the Iraqi people.
Al-Dhari, head of the influential Sunni Association of Muslim
Scholars, is an extreme hard-liner who recently mocked a government
offer of reconciliation in return for abandoning the insurgency. But
the move against him threatens to drive many moderate Sunnis out of
the political system.
Already, moderate Sunnis have been threatening for weeks to leave
the
government and take up arms. If that happens, it would likely lead
to
a full-fledged civil war and make it much harder for U.S. troops to
withdraw from Iraq.
The warrant was issued on a day when at least 49 Iraqis died
violently
and the U.S. military announced the deaths of four more American
soldiers. Sunnis and Shiites could not agree on whether all hostages
had been released from a mass abduction in Baghdad two days earlier,
and one man said he'd been beaten by the kidnappers.
Mohammed Bashar al-Faidi, spokesman for the Sunni association,
condemned the warrant for al-Dhari's arrest.
``This government should resign before the Iraqi people force it to
resign,'' al-Faidi told Al-Jazeera television from Jordan. ``The
association calls on its people to be calm.''
Al-Faidi accused the interior minister ``of supporting terrorism by
covering for (Shiite) militias that are killing the Iraqi people.''
Earlier this year, the Sunni association blamed the Interior
Ministry
for the killing of a nephew and cousin of al-Dhari. Their bodies
were
found in a bullet-riddled vehicle in Baghdad.
Al-Dhari regularly travels between Iraq and the Persian Gulf states,
as well as Syria, Jordan and Egypt. He was believed to be in Jordan
when the arrest warrant was issued Thursday night.
Al-Dhari, who is about 65, is an outspoken critic of Prime Minister
Nouri al-Maliki's Shiite-dominated government and the U.S.
occupation.
On Tuesday, President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, called him a
hard-liner
with ``nothing to do but incite sectarian and ethnic sedition.''
There is precedent for an arrest warrant leading to violence in
Iraq.
In April 2004, a U.S. warrant against radical anti-American Shiite
cleric Muqtada al-Sadr prompted a two-week uprising by his Mahdi
Army
militia. Hundreds were killed.
Al-Maliki, despite heavy pressure from the United States, has done
nothing to wipe out the Mahdi Army. Its benefactor, al-Sadr, is a
key
backer of the prime minister.
The Mahdi Army was believed responsible for kidnapping scores of
people from a Higher Education Ministry office building in Baghdad
on
Tuesday. The aftermath of that mass abduction has turned into a
propaganda war.
On Thursday, the Sunni higher education minister called the Interior
Ministry ``a farce'' for not preventing the crime and claimed more
than half the 150 victims were still in the hands of Shiite
abductors.
But National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie, a Shiite, said
everyone had been freed and accused Arab satellite broadcasters and
Western media of hostile reporting to incite sectarian hatred in
Iraq.
Within hours, however, Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, spokesman for
the Interior Ministry, was amending that account, saying all the
Higher Education Ministry employees were free but that others taken
from the building were still hostages. He gave no numbers.
A Sunni who said he was among those abducted and released claimed
his
arm was broken by the kidnappers. He said he saw them kill at least
three hostages after taking them to empty houses in Baghdad's Sadr
City Shiite slum, a stronghold of the Mahdi Army.
The man, who goes by the name Abu Kadhim, or father of Kadhim, would
not allow use of his full name for fear of further trouble with the
Mahdi Army, which he blamed for his torture and 2 days in captivity.
He disputed Khalaf's claim that police had freed the kidnap victims.
``Thursday, they just opened the doors and dragged us into trucks.
Then they dumped us on Canal Street,'' Abu Kadhim said. That street
runs along the Army Canal just west of Sadr City.
``I was lucky,'' he said. ``They only beat me with a wooden club.
Others were handcuffed and hanged from the ceiling by their wrists.
They were beaten with iron bars. Others, building guards, had cotton
shoved in their mouths and tape wound around their heads. They
suffocated. One was shot in the back. The managers in the building
and
people with higher degrees, masters and doctorates, were in a
different room. I could hear them screaming like women. Then it was
quiet. I think they died.''
Abu Kadhim's story could not be independently confirmed. He was
interviewed by telephone.
In Thursday's deadliest attack in the capital, gunmen fired on a
bakery, killing nine people, police said. Such attacks are usually
carried out by Sunni militants since most bakeries in the capital
are
run by Shiites.
The U.S. military announced that three Task Force Lightning soldiers
assigned to 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, were
killed
Wednesday in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad, one by small arms
fire and two by a roadside bomb. A soldier from the Army's
Multinational Corps-Iraq was killed Tuesday by small arms fire
during
an operation in Baghdad.
The deaths raised the number of American war dead to 2,862. So far
this month in Iraq, 44 American service members have been killed or
died.
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