After May 3, 2005: Men in Police Uniforms Begin Attacking Sunni Males

The corpses of Sunni males begin appearing in Baghdad’s main morgue after reportedly being detained by men wearing police uniforms. The abductors are often seen driving Toyota Land Cruisers and armed with Glocks. A US official claims that police uniforms can be bought for a cheap price by non-governmental armed groups. But unexplained is how the attackers can afford Toyotas and Glocks, both of which are very expensive and usually only used by Western contractors and Iraqi government forces. Faik Baqr, director of the morgue, tells Knight Ridder that the bodies always look as if they were killed in a “methodical” fashion. The bodies are often tortured and mutilated with their eyes blindfolded. They look as if they had been “whipped with a cord, subjected to electric shocks or beaten with a blunt object and shot to death, often with single bullets to their heads.” The torture markings are similar to those that have been found on the bodies of survivors rescued from Interior Ministry prisons by the human rights ministry. The morgue director also says that he has been receiving about 700 to 800 suspicious deaths a month ever since May, with 500 having firearm wounds. [Knight Ridder, 6/28/2005]