BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraq’s interior minister, whose forces are accused of complicity in sectarian death-squad killings, strenuously defended his agency in an interview with U.S. reporters Friday and said he had the backing of the prime minister and the parliament to remove corrupt and incompetent commanders from the streets.
But Jawad al-Bolani, a political independent who took over as interior minister in June after weeks of infighting over the post, also downplayed the problems at the ministry, seen by many as a source of sectarian tension and violence throughout the country.
He said more than two-thirds of the victims of sectarian killings show up in areas of Baghdad under the control of the Ministry of Defense, which oversees the Iraqi army, suggesting the intense U.S. and Iraqi focus on the alleged abuses of his forces is exaggerated.
“Baghdad is not only the Ministry of Interior,” al-Bolani said in his Baghdad offices. “It is divided in responsibility.”
Iraq’s Shiite-dominated Ministry of Interior has been accused by Sunni Arabs of harboring or tolerating Shiite militias that have been linked to a torrent of targeted murders of Sunni Arab civilians. Dozens of corpses bearing signs of torture show up daily.
Al-Bolani sidestepped questions about whether he saw any militia influence in his government ministry. But he drew a distinction between militias that existed before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and others such as radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s al-Mahdi Army that emerged afterward. Under Iraqi law, those that existed before the invasion and fought former President Saddam Hussein have a right to be incorporated into security forces; the others are outside the law, he said.
