Iraq - Meet the New Boss - Same as the Old Boss!

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Iraq - Meet the New Boss - Same as the Old Boss! This is just an excerpt. Find the rest at: http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/07/292864.shtml or just Google using allawi+six+6 Allawi personally executed 6 detainees: Sydney Morning Herald author: wsws.org "The prisoners were against the wall and we were standing in the courtyard when the interior minister [Falah al-Naqib] said that he would like to kill them all on the spot. Allawi said they deserved worse than death, but then he pulled the pistol from his belt and started shooting them." WSWS : News & Analysis : Middle East : Iraq Iraqi prime minister accused of murdering detainees By James Conachy 19 July 2004 In an exclusive report in the Sydney Morning Herald and Age newspapers, two Iraqi men claim to have witnessed Iyad Allawi, the US-installed Iraqi interim prime minister, murder six handcuffed and blindfolded prisoners. The summary executions allegedly occurred in mid-June, while Allawi was visiting the Al-Amariyah security center in Baghdad. The newspapers appear to have had the story for several weeks. They finally decided to publish the article on July 17, noting that "the failure by Iraqi and US officialdom to mount convincing denials makes the witness accounts impossible to ignore". According to their Baghdad correspondent, Paul McGeough, who conducted the interviews, the two witnesses were found independently of one another and spoken to separately. Neither received payment. One of the men told the journalist: "The prisoners were against the wall and we were standing in the courtyard when the interior minister [Falah al-Naqib] said that he would like to kill them all on the spot. Allawi said they deserved worse than death, but then he pulled the pistol from his belt and started shooting them." The other witness said the prisoners, all young men who had been detained on suspicion of involvement in the anti-US resistance, had been subjected to repeated torture in the days before Allawi gunned them down. He stated: "They were happy to die because they had already been beaten by the police for two to eight hours a day to make them talk." The two witnesses alleged that Allawi shot seven men in cold blood. Six died instantly, while the other was severely wounded. The article gave the names of three of the victims as Ahmed Abdulah Ahsamey, Amer Lutfi Mohammed Ahmed al-Kutsia and Walid Mehdi Ahmed al-Sammarrai. One of the witnesses said he watched as Allawi's bodyguards threw the bodies into the back of a Nissan utility and drove off. The other claimed the bodies were buried in the desert on the outskirts of Baghdad, west of the Abu Ghraib prison. The fate of the wounded man is unclear from the report. According to the witnesses, as many as 30 people were present during the murders, including Iraqi police and five or six civilian-clad Americans from the US Special Forces assigned to Allawi's security detail. Allawi allegedly told them after murdering the six men that he wanted to show the Iraqi police how to "deal with" the opposition to the US occupation of Iraq