NICOLE COLSON reports on the aftermath of the Iraqi government's offensive against Moktada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.
SECURITY FORCES of the U.S.-backed Iraqi government may have carried out summary executions of members of rebel cleric Moktada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, according to media revelations that have once again exposed the scale of brutality in "liberated" Iraq.
At the end of March, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered a halt to the government's assault on Mahdi fighters, following days of intense combat in which at least 500 people in Basra and in the Sadr City section of Baghdad are said to have been killed. The offensive was an attempt to crack down on the Mahdi Army and force it to disarm.
According to a report by National Public Radio, audiotape of police radio transmissions reveal what appears to be the execution of detained Shiite militia members. On the tape, intercepted from an Iraqi police radio channel in the city of Karbala, an Iraqi policeman reportedly asked his commander what to do with a wounded militia fighter.
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