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July 13, 2005
Container Deaths
Remember our outrage over container deaths in Afghanistan perpetrated by the Taliban? I suppose these won't be getting anywhere near the same coverage; after all, these are "our boys" doing it now.
Iraq's leading Sunni Muslim groups reacted angrily yesterday to reports that 10 Sunni Arab men suffocated to death in the back of a police lorry in Baghdad's sweltering summer heat. The men are alleged to have died after being arrested by Iraqi anti-terrorist special forces on Sunday as they visited relatives at a hospital in the mainly Shia neighbourhood of Shula in north-western Baghdad.A spokesman for the conservative Association of Muslim Clerics said yesterday that 11 men had been rounded up after an incident in which US troops fired at a group of construction workers.
The men, aged between 20 and 30, were taken to a detention centre where they were tortured, he alleged.
They were then herded into a police truck for up to 14 hours, where they lost consciousness and and all but one died. The temperature outside was above 40C (104F).
When will we stop with all this democracy spreading? And how long before the current Iraqi security apparatus --set up with our help, encouragement and weapons-- make people wish for Saddam's?
That's quite an idea, even to imagine, but that's where we seem to be headed.
Posted by zeynep at July 13, 2005 04:15 PM