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New Iraqi leader shoots prisoners in cold blood
The new Iraqi Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, has a very dark side that we are not supposed to know about.
He helped Saddam Hussein to sieze power in Iraq. He has personally shot unarmed Iraqis in cold blood in Saddam-style executions. Allawi's ambition has always been to rule Iraq, and he pursues this ambition ruthlessly, changing alligience as it suits him.
Allawi was a member of the Ba'ath party for many years before he betrayed Saddam by selling his services to American and British intelligence. MI6. His reward is the top job in Iraq.
SOURCES
Sydney Morning Herald, "US official confirms Allawi shot six dead", 19 January 2005.
http://smh.com.au/articles/2005/01/18/1105810916006.html
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Dr Allawi denied the allegations when they were published in the Herald last July.
Anderson writes: "The man ... described how Allawi had been taken to seven suspects, who were made to stand against a wall in a courtyard of the police station, their faces covered. After being told of their alleged crimes by a police official, Allawi had asked for a pistol, and then shot each prisoner in the head. [One of the men survived.] Afterward, the witness said, Allawi had declared to those present, 'This is how we must deal with the terrorists.' The witness said he approved of Allawi's act, adding that, in any case, the terrorists were better off dead, for they had been tortured for days."
New Yorker, "Allawi: a man of the shadows", 17 January 2005.
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?050124fa_fact1
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More unnervingly, there have been persistent rumors that, a week or so before he took office, Allawi shot and killed several terrorist suspects being held prisoner at a Baghdad police station. When reporters asked him about the rumors, Allawi denied that he had shot anyone, but added that he would do “everything necessary” to protect Iraqis. I was in Baghdad at the time; although most Iraqis I spoke to believed the rumors, journalists and diplomats speculated that Allawi had spread them himself, in order to bolster his stern reputation.
In late June, however, I sat in on an interview, conducted by Paul McGeough, a reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald, of a man who claimed to have witnessed the executions. He described how Allawi had been taken to seven suspects, who were made to stand against a wall in a courtyard of the police station, their faces covered. After being told of their alleged crimes by a police official, Allawi had asked for a pistol, and then shot each prisoner in the head. Afterward, the witness said, Allawi had declared to those present, “This is how we must deal with the terrorists.” The witness said that he approved of Allawi’s act, adding that, in any case, the terrorists were better off dead, for they had been tortured for days.
In the ensuing months, the story has lingered, never having been either fully confirmed or convincingly denied. (Allawi did not address the incident with me.) During my visit to Jordan, a well-known former government minister told me that an American official had confirmed that the killings took place, saying to him, “What a mess we’re in—we got rid of one son of a bitch only to get another.”
Just as, in the past, Iraqis hid their true feelings about Saddam’s brutal tyranny by referring to him as “strict,” Iraqis today commonly describe Allawi as “tough.” It is an oddly polite term—a euphemism—that conceals varying degrees of fear, loathing, and admiration. An Iraqi friend of Allawi’s who has close links to Jordan’s Hashemite monarchy told me, “Iyad’s a thug, but a thug where he needs to be one. The Americans who set this up call him Saddam Lite.” Another old friend of Allawi’s, an Iraqi who now lives in Jordan, told me that, during a recent private reunion, Allawi had said that he was shocked, upon returning to Iraq after thirty years in exile, by the degree to which Saddam’s rule had debased Iraqi society. “He said Iraqis had become liars and cheats and murderers, and only respected brute force, and that was how he had to deal with them,” the friend recalled. In a fit of emotion, Allawi had exclaimed, “I will use brute force!”—three times, as if uttering a vow, punching one fist into the palm of his other hand.
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Allawi denied that he had been involved in torture and killing. “In 1963, I was just a secondary student and I am known to have stood against the Investigation Committee and the National Guard of the Baath Party—those who killed the Communists—and later, when the Baath Party split, I joined the smaller group that opposed the atrocities of 1963,” he said.
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After the coup, an Army officer, Abdel Salaam Aref—the head of a coalition of competing factions, including the Baathists—seized power. By the end of the year, the Baathists had been purged. Around this time, Allawi became friendly with Saddam, and he helped facilitate his brutal rise. The two conspired against the government and were thrown in jail together. Allawi’s family bailed him out, and Saddam escaped in 1966. Allawi and Saddam immediately resumed their plotting.
In July, 1968, the Baathists forcibly regained power. Allawi played a role in this coup: following his party’s orders, the day after his mother’s funeral he hurried back from Beirut to help seize Baghdad’s main radio station. The new regime was led by Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr, who became Iraq’s new President, and Saddam Hussein, his distant cousin, who quickly emerged as the dominant force. In 1979, Saddam displaced his relative and took over.
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Badri also said that Allawi fell out with Saddam after Saddam heard that Allawi had come into contact with M.I.6, the British intelligence agency. “Saddam invited him to come back to Baghdad, he refused to go, and he retired from the Baath Party,” Badri said. Allawi told me that he did not begin working with British intelligence until 1990, but there is little doubt that the alliance began many years before that. Both sides profited from the relationship. For the British, Allawi was a powerful Iraqi dissident whose knowledge and contacts offered a potential means of future influence there. For Allawi, the relationship with M.I.6 assured him of continued sanctuary in Britain and provided funds for him to build his own political operation while living in exile.
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"The Insider" mailing list article, 19 January 2005.
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