A little revenge going on. Saves a lot of trials. I can hear the "Hand Wringers." "Oh, this will create another cycle of violence!" Nothing wrong with the Mosaic Code.
"We are an Eastern, tribal society with the principle of vengeance. Revenge will be exacted,"
Iraqis Exact Revenge on Baathists
Police Shrug Off Killings of 50 Hussein Loyalists by Unknown Gunmen
By Alan Sipress
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, December 20, 2003; Page A01
BAGHDAD -- Basil Abbas Taee never saw the slip of paper entitled Final Warning.
The note, which his sons said was tossed over the gate of his house in southeast Baghdad, cautioned that he was being watched. "If you go out of your home or have connections with other Baathists, you and all your family will be killed as a lesson to all criminal Baathists," the message threatened. It was signed the Committee for Retribution.
Taee, 59, a former local official in Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, had received an earlier written warning in September and menacing phone calls, his brothers recalled. But after two months of staying home, he began to brave the streets again. When his wife found the final warning note in late November, she hid it from him, afraid it would aggravate his ailing kidneys and high blood pressure.
Two weeks ago, as Taee sat alone in his small real estate office, a lone gunman shot him in the chest, according to his brothers, citing witness accounts. He died before reaching the hospital.
His death was one of the latest in a series of murders of former Baath Party officials in this city. Iraqi sources with contacts among former and current security officials estimate that about 50 senior figures in Hussein's intelligence, military intelligence and internal security organizations have been gunned down in recent months. There has been an even larger toll among neighborhood party officials, such as Taee, who are blamed for having informed on the local community during Hussein's rule, these sources said.
Neither the morgue nor officers in Iraq's new police force -- who concede they have little interest in probing these deaths -- have tallied the figures. But the phenomenon is citywide, according to a survey of police stations, with numbers varying widely from one district to another.
In the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Friday, officials said an angry crowd attacked and killed Ali Zalimi, a former Baath Party official. Zalimi was believed to have played a role in crushing the Shiite uprising in 1991 after the Persian Gulf War.
The massive settling of scores that some U.S. and Iraqi officials had predicted did not initially materialize after Hussein's government fell in April. Sporadic killings occurred during the following months, notably in the southern city of Basra. But only in recent weeks did the tempo of attacks accelerate as Iraqis, frustrated with the slow progress of the court system and fearing that Baathists may be seeking to reorganize, have increasingly taken justice into their own hands, according to Iraqi security and political sources.
"We are an Eastern, tribal society with the principle of vengeance. Revenge will be exacted," said Maj. Abbas Abed Ali of the Baya police station in southwest Baghdad. He said at least six Baathists have been murdered in his district since late November.
In Sadr City, a sprawling, hardscrabble neighborhood in eastern Baghdad, police reported that the assassinations began about three weeks ago and now number at least one or two a day, perhaps more. They said some families do not disclose that the victims were Baathists.
"This is absolutely organized, but we don't know precisely who's behind it," said Capt. Awad Nima, who heads police administration in Sadr City. "These killings are a vendetta for the killings by the Baath Party. . . . Would you expect those people who lost their sons not to take any action?"
Nima said the assassinations have centered on Hussein followers implicated in violence, not all former party members. The murders seem meticulously planned, and the perpetrators leave behind no clues, he said. With few leads, detectives have made little progress in figuring out who is killing the Baathists, but Nima said this does not trouble him.
"There's only a limited number of them. Once they're all dead, this will have to end," he said.
Another of those killed was Ismail Hassan Saadi, 50, who ran the personnel and management department in one of Sadr City's Baath offices. His sons described him as a devout Muslim, respected in the community for using his party position to intervene with the government on behalf of those who had been wrongly arrested or were wanted for deserting the army. Neighbors, however, said Saadi was deeply involved in repressing local Shiite groups and was known for coercing local men into joining the army.
One morning this month, Saadi left his home along a side street deep with standing water and headed on foot for a local office to see about a passport, according to an account by his grown sons, Ashraf and Zain Abidin.
Moments later, they heard a shot. They scrambled to their father, discovering him crumpled by the wall of a large warehouse, fatally wounded with a gunshot to the back. At the same time, they spotted a blue Opel with three men inside and no license plates racing from the scene.
"There are some who want to cleanse this area of ex-Baathists," said Ashraf, 26. The brothers softly recounted their father's tale, seated cross-legged on the carpeted floor of their dimly lit home, their checkered headdresses pulled down over their ears in mourning.
"If we find out who did it, all of us, our family and our tribe, will take our revenge," Ashraf said.
They might not be alone. The traditional death notices of Baghdad society -- black banners inscribed with the names of the deceased and their relatives -- are proliferating along the walls of Sadr City.
Victims' families and some Iraqi security officials have alleged that Shiite political parties, relentlessly repressed by Hussein's government, are behind the killing spree. They point in particular to the Dawa Party and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which are both represented on the Iraqi Governing Council.
Senior officials from both groups denied any involvement. "It's not our policy to take revenge and execute people," said Adel Abdel-Mehdi of the Supreme Council.
Many of those killed were former intelligence and internal security officials who had been assigned over their careers to countering the activities of Shiite political groups and their sponsors in neighboring Iran, according to sources close to current and former security officials.
One such victim was Maj. Gen. Khalaf Alousi, the former head of internal security for Baghdad.
"He spent his whole career dealing with the Dawa Party and other Islamic parties, so he amassed many enemies," said Capt. Ahmed Suleiman of the Yarmouk police district in central Baghdad, where Alousi was killed. "This guy was involved with the executions of members of other parties. Now the other parties are in power and there's a settling of accounts."
Alousi, 50, was gunned down shortly before midday on Dec. 6 after he took his wife to visit a house he was having built in the Yarmouk neighborhood, according to his brother, Raid Alousi. When they entered the house, a stranger was waiting, and pulled out a gun. Alousi's wife leapt between the attacker and her husband, but the gunmen reached above her and fired, Raid said. Another man appeared, shooting from behind. The two continued firing bullets into Alousi's body even after he collapsed.
The killings of Baath security officials have revealed fissures in Iraqi society, not only between supporters and opponents of the Hussein government but also between some Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Most of the security chiefs were Sunnis like Hussein; the suspected killers are Shiites.
Sunnis increasingly view the bloodletting in sectarian terms. At the memorial reception for Alousi, dozens of mourners gathered in two facing rows of chairs arrayed under a tent. Young men moved among them with cups of sweet tea, trays of cigarettes and a bottle of rose water perfume. The guests whispered among themselves, sharing details of Alousi's death, passing news about other murders and musing about revenge.
"For each one they kill," said a mourner, "we'll kill four."
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