Thread: Iraqi ministry officials arrested

Iraqi ministry officials arrested

Twenty-three officials from Iraq's interior and defence ministries have been arrested on suspicion of being members of a banned Baathist party.

An interior ministry spokesman told the BBC that the arrested officials, who rank from lieutenant to brigadier general, were being questioned.

They are accused of belonging to al-Awda, "The Return", a descendant of Saddam Hussein's Baath party.

The Baath party was outlawed after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Election run-up

The New York Times reported that some of those arrested had been quietly working to reconstitute Saddam Hussein's Baath party.

It quoted one high-ranking interior ministry official as saying that those affiliated with al-Awda had bribed other officers to recruit them, and those who carried out the raids on the officials found huge amounts of money.

Several officials from the ministries of the interior and national security said that some of those arrested were in the early stages of planning a coup, the paper reported.

But interior ministry spokesman Major General Abdul Karim Khalaf told the BBC that none of those arrested were suspected of plotting a coup or bribing others to join the party.

He also said it was not clear if those arrested were Sunni or Shia.

The arrests come at a delicate time for Iraq, says BBC Baghdad correspondent Caroline Wyatt.

Provincial elections are being held in January, which Iraqis hope will pass off peacefully.

But the political atmosphere is charged, with rumours of coup attempts and conspiracies rife in Baghdad in the run-up to the elections, our correspondent adds.

Baathists return

The interior ministry is responsible for policing and internal security and has in the past been accused of being dysfunctional and riven by sectarianism.

It has long been thought to be heavily-infiltrated by Shia militias, although things are said to have improved in the recent years.

The Baath party, formed mainly from Iraq's Sunni minority, ruled the country for more than three decades, mostly under Saddam Hussein.

The party was declared illegal after the 2003 invasion, and members were banned from holding government jobs. The army was disbanded, thousands of teachers, university lecturers and civil servants were sacked.

Much of the Sunni insurgency that took place in the intervening years is thought to be centred on dismissed military men from the Baathist regime.

Earlier this year, the Shia-led government introduced a new law allowing former Baath Party members to return to public life.

Many lower-ranking Baath Party members are believed to have returned to posts in various ministries, including the interior ministry.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/default.stm