BRECKNOCK PEACE AND JUSTICE GROUP SUBMIT IMPORTANT PARLIAMENTARY QUESTIONS THROUGH LOCAL MP ROGER WILLIAMS

Parliamentary Questions

The real voices from Iraq are united in telling us that theirs is not a sectarian society, but our media continually insists that the situtation is otherwise. If a civil war happens in Iraq, it will not be despite the best efforts of our government, it will be due to the best efforts of our government.

The media is full of buzz words and phrases, such as 'taking place on someone's watch' or that something is a 'clear and present danger'. As human beings and British citizens we must be aware that the bloody occupation of Iraq is happening on our watch and that there is a clear and present danger that the massacre of Iraqi citizens will continue unchecked if we do not take action. For those who've looked at the history of US involvement in Latin America's so-called dirty wars, the usual suspects ­ secretive intelligence and special forces operatives working in cooperation with paramilitary armies of the shadow state ­ abound.

This page will be dedicated to promoting, supporting and recording all actions taken to highlight the activities of death squads in Iraq.

As an initial step, please write to your MP expressing your concern along the lines suggested in the sample letter below. If you receive an electronic reply or are able to scan pages, please forward copies of your correspondence to the email address given below and we will publish every response that we receive in this space.

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Dear I am writing to express my deep concern about this country's involvement in the ongoing violence taking place across Iraq. As you are no doubt aware, reliable reports coming from Iraq indicate that hundreds of people are being killed every week. According to John Pace, the former head of the UN Human Rights Office in Iraq, some 1000 Iraqis are being tortured to death in Baghdad alone each month.You will also be aware that a large percentage of the victims display symptoms consistent with what is normally termed extrajudicial execution. By this I mean that the victims' hands are bound, frequently with handcuffs, they are commonly blindfolded and most of them have been dispatched with shots to the head from close range. In addition, many of the bodies are said to show evidence of horrific tortures involving the use of blunt instruments, sharp instruments, electrodes, cigarettes, acid and even drills. Most disturbingly, there is now general agreement that the death squads responsible for the vast bulk of these crimes are operating from the new Ministry of the Interior and consist of members of Iraq's new security forces armed and trained by ourselves and our American allies. In at least one instance it has been demonstrated that British-trained police in Basra murdered two civilians with electric drills (Independent, 19 November 2005). Despite the fact that most press reports claim the security forces have been infiltratated by members of unaccountable Shiite militias, little evidence has been presented to back this assertion. What evidence there is suggests that the atrocities are committed by the very forces that we have established, such as the Interior Ministry's Special Police Commandos. In any case, it is absolutely unacceptable for our governement to wash its hands of responsibility in a country that we are militarily occupying and in which we and our American allies spent over a year supposedly building up the infrastructure necessary for a peaceful and democratic society. In view of the ongoing human rights catastrophe: a) please tell me what concrete measures the British goverment is taking to ensure that members of the Iraqi population are being protected from the activities of death squads in the areas of British responsibilty; b) please tell me what measures have been implemented to ensure that police or army units that receive British support (either intellectual or material) are not responsible for human rights abuses; c) please tell me what steps the government has taken to bring the authors of these crimes to justice and whether it will support independent international teams of investigators such as the UN raporteur for extrajudicial killings. If it transpires that the British government is unwilling to take any responsiblilty for areas in which it has committed British military forces, please assure me that you will advocate the immediate withdrawal of those forces and their replacement with an internationally mandated peacekeeping force. Yours sincerely