Iraq's death squads: On the brink of civil war

Most of the corpses in Baghdad's mortuary show signs of torture and execution. And the Interior Ministry is being blamed.

By Andrew Buncombe and Patrick Cockburn
Published: 26 February 2006

Hundreds of Iraqis are being tortured to death or summarily executed every month in Baghdad alone by death squads working from the Ministry of the Interior, the United Nations' outgoing human rights chief in Iraq has revealed.

John Pace, who left Baghdad two weeks ago, told The Independent on Sunday that up to three-quarters of the corpses stacked in the city's mortuary show evidence of gunshot wounds to the head or injuries caused by drill-bits or burning cigarettes. Much of the killing, he said, was carried out by Shia Muslim groups under the control of the Ministry of the Interior.