Men in black terrorise Iraq’s women
…The militants issued a warning that in future women walking down the street without a hijab faced death.
Zarqawi’s reign of terror in the most affluent Sunni neighbourhoods illustrates the insurgents’ all-pervasive power. None of the restrictions imposed by his militias are law, yet women have no legal recourse.
timesonline.co.uk
June 4th in Iraq
Violence raged across Iraq on Sunday amid signs its leaders remained deadlocked on naming new interior and defense ministers critical to restoring stability in the strife-torn country.
In one of the worst incidents, gunmen dragged 24 civilians out of their cars at a makeshift checkpoint in a town north of Baghdad and shot them “execution style”, police said.
The victims included students, children and elderly men, said a senior police official in Diyala province, scene of frequent attacks by insurgents waging a campaign of bombings and shootings to topple the U.S.-backed, Shi’ite-led government.
In Iraq’s south, a Sunni religious group accused security forces in the Shi’ite-run city of Basra of killing 12 unarmed worshippers in a mosque early on Sunday, but police said they had returned fire and shot dead nine “terrorists”.
The incident came just hours after a car bomb killed 28 people in Basra, challenging a state of emergency declared by new Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to crack down on criminal gangs and Shi’ite factions whose feuding threatens oil exports.
2006: A CATALOGUE OF ALLEGED US ATROCITIES
Some 600 cases of abuse by GIs against civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan have so far been investigated by the Pentagon. Although around 230 soldiers have been disciplined, most military personnel found guilty of abusing civilians received ‘administrative’ punishment such as being reduced in rank, loss of pay, confinement to base or extra duty. Out of 76 courts martial, only a few resulted in jail terms of more than a year.