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An Inquiry in Baghdad Is Clouded by Politics
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Dec 19, 2008 07:59am |
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| Category | News |
| Media | Newspaper - New York Times |
| News Date | Thursday, December 18, 2008 01:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON and TAREQ MAHER
Published: December 18, 2008
BAGHDAD — Iraqi officials on Thursday confirmed a wave of arrests in what appeared to be a major internal crackdown inside the nation’s security apparatus. But in an atmosphere of secrecy and political rivalry, the officials could agree on few other facts, from the number detained to the seriousness of the allegations.
At a news conference on Thursday, Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, the spokesman for the Interior Ministry, repeated some of the more serious allegations that had leaked out the night before. He told reporters that 23 officials from the Interior Ministry had been arrested in recent days, many for being affiliated with Al Awda, a descendant of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party, which is now banned.
In a possible indication of the breadth of the investigation, the Interior Ministry said that the investigation involved not only the ministry itself, as had been reported, but also the Defense and National Security Ministries. Others said that the investigation was not over and that more arrests could be expected.
But General Khalaf sought to discredit the most serious of the allegations made earlier by Iraqi officials, saying there was no evidence that the suspects were in the early stages of planning a coup against Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.
The conflicting accounts of the operation prompted an urgent question from Mr. Maliki’s critics: Were the arrests politically motivated, carried out as a way for Mr. Maliki to weaken his rivals before the nationwide provincial elections planned for next month? |
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