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Funeral held for six Shiite drivers
(AP) Dozens of angry Shiites accused Fallujah police Tuesday of handing over Shiite truck drivers to Sunni extremists who slaughtered them after they sought refuge at a police station. Iraqi authorities denied the charge.

The allegations were raised at a funeral service in Baghdad’s Firdos Square for six Shiite truck drivers whose bodies were found Monday at a morgue in Ramadi, west of Fallujah. Mourners said the men were delivering a load of tents to the Fallujah Brigade, a force that cooperates with the U.S. military in the restive city 40 miles west of the capital. On their return trip to Baghdad on June 5, the drivers were stopped by armed men who identified themselves as "mujahedeen," fighters who battled Marines to a hudna standstill in April.

The six drivers escaped and sought refuge in a police station, the mourners said. However, they were handed over to a hard-line Sunni cleric because they were Shiites, the mourners said. They were killed after the men who were holding them, one of them a Syrian, demanded $3,000 for each driver, the mourners said. Their families could not afford the ransom.

Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman, spokesman of the Interior Ministry, described the allegations against the police as "baseless," but confirmed that the killings took place in the Fallujah area. If true, the incident raises new questions about the capability of the Iraqi police to handle security after the handover of sovereignty June 30.

A 12-year-old boy, Mohammed Khudeir, said he was among those allegedly handed over by the police. But the cleric and his followers let him go, apparently because of his age. "We tried to seek police protection, but the policemen handed us over," Khudeir said. He said the cleric "handed us over to a group of Arabs who spoke with non-Iraqi accents. I was tortured for a while, but then I was released." Khudeir’s brother and uncle were slain by the insurgents, he said.
Wonder what Sy Hersh would say about a 12 year old being tortured by US troops? And yet, not a peep about this.
The hard-line cleric to whom the police reportedly handed over the men dismissed claims he was involved in the killings, but said he was ready to stand trial in an Islamic court if credible evidence against him was provided. "I am not a criminal, nor an assassin, nor bloodthirsty," Imam Abdullah al-Janabi told Al-Arabiya television. "I am above these accusations. I cannot stain my hands with a crime."
"'cause I always get Mahmoud here to do my crimes for me!"
One man, Alaa Mery, said that on June 8, he went to Fallujah to negotiate for the hostages’ release. He said he met with some Syrians who identified themselves as members of the extremist Wahhabist sect predominant in Saudi arabia and said they were holding the drivers because they collaborated with the Americans.

"Fallujah clerics and people made a big fuss regarding Abu Ghraib torture, but now they are killing and mutilating Muslims," Mery said, referring to the American abuse of Iraqis at the Abu Ghraib prison. "They are not resistance. They are a copy of Saddam."
From your lips to Allan's ears.

Posted by: Anonymous4617 2004-06-16
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=35595