Robin Cook demands Red Cross investigates execution claims
By David Pratt, Foreign Editor, and Torcuil Crichton
Iraq’s Prime Minister Iyad Allawi shot dead as many as six suspected insurgents last month, just days before Washington handed political control over to his new government.
Two separate witnesses said that the prisoners, blindfolded and handcuffed, were lined up against a wall in a courtyard next to a maximum security cell at al-Amariyah prison in Baghdad. Allawi then pulled out a pistol and shot them in the head, telling policemen that he was setting an example on how to deal with resistance fighters. Allawi is said to have told onlookers that the men “deserved worse than death”. Some 30 witnesses are said to have been present in the compound when Allawi paid a surprise visit to the security facility to reassure police officers that they would be protected from reprisals if they killed insurgents in the course of their duty.
The claims, first published in the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday and written by the distinguished Australian journalist Paul McGeough, have raised fears that Dr Allawi is returning to the cold-blooded tactics of his predecessor, Saddam Hussein, and has led to urgent calls for the Red Cross to launch an investigation.
"These are dreadful allegations. It is vital that they are cleared up one way or another and that needs an independent inquiry,”
said former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who quit the Cabinet over the Iraq war. “An international body such as the Red Cross would be best able to give authority to the investigation that the situation now demands.”
Senior US officials have not made an outright dismissal of the allegations but Allawi’s office has denied the claims concerning the conduct of the man meant to be leading Iraq towards democratic elections in January.
In a letter to the newspaper, it said Allawi had never visited the prison, did not carry a gun, and that the allegations are rumours instigated by enemies of Allawi’s government. Reports of the killings were also dismissed by the UK government. A spokesman for the Foreign Office said its staff in Baghdad had no knowledge of the allegations. “There are thousands of rumours sweeping the city and this is just one of them,” he said.
In contrast, Downing Street was aware of the report but said it was an issue for the Iraqi government. “This was put to Allawi at a press conference on Thursday and he denied it. As far as we are concerned the matter is dealt with,” an official said.
The reports, in a country where rumour is as powerful as fact, are a devastating blow to the interim Iraqi’s government’s role in creating a climate for free democratic elections. As well as his own security staff, Allawi is accompanied at all times by a close protection unit of soldiers drawn from US special forces. Having ambushed the UN plan to appoint a technocratic interim prime minister last month, Allawi, a former hitman for the Saddam regime, has shown signs of flexing his power under the interim constitution to its limits and breaking out of US control.
"If we attempted to refute each rumor, we would have no time for other business, as far as this press office is concerned, this case is closed,”
said a spokesman at the US embassy in Baghdad.
Iraq’s justice minister Malik al-Hassan escaped but five bodyguards were killed when a suicide bomber drove into his convoy yesterday in an attack claimed by a group led by al-Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. International: Special report on Iyad Allawi 18 July 2004.
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