Incompetent & Crooked Iraqi Police Allow Terrorists to Escape Imprisonment (updated)

By Andrew Cochran

For at least the second time in the past 5 months, some of the most dangerous terrorists have been able to escape from an Iraqi jail guarded by Iraqi police. Today, militants stormed Mosul's northwestern Badoush prison and freed over 140 prisoners, most of whom are described as "insurgents." You can bet they weren't traffic violators; they were probably key operatives in terrorist cells who were painstakingly hunted down by the U.S. military and Iraqi army. The overwhelmed police asked the U.S. military for help, but too late to stop the escaping terrorists.

(UPDATE: In a second version of the original story, Reuters reports, "Hisham al-Hamdani, a member of the Mosul provincial government, said Abu Omar al-Baghdadi took part in the attack himself." That would be the leader of the "Islamic State of Iraq," whom local officials claimed to have captured in raids with U.S. forces. See my March 4 post detailing this false claim (among many others). Iraqi officials later claimed that they actually captured two brothers of Baghdadi; if so, it would explain Baghdadi's decision to lead the raid, if he in fact led it - but who knows anymore?)

And escapes by Iraqi terrorists from the clutches of the Iraqi police have happened often, thanks to the incompetence and corruption of the Iraqi police. Saddam Hussein's nephew, who was serving a life sentence for bomb-making, escaped from prison on December 9 in northern Iraq with the help of a police officer. Later that month, Saddam's former electricity minister escaped from a Baghdad prison with the help of private security forces who used to guard him. No doubt these escapes played a role in the al-Maliki government's decision to quickly execute Saddam, before his sympathizers among the police could spring him.

The Iraqi police have been a source of frustration and failure almost from the beginning of the U.S. occupation. In mid-2005, the Defense Department's Inspector General (corrected from earlier version) issued a report on our development program and warned, "Despite recent improvements, too many recruits are marginally literate; some show up for training with criminal records or physical handicaps; and some recruits allegedly are infiltrating insurgents." The British raided the Basra police station last week after reports of torture of prisoners. Today's USA Today reports that the Interior Ministry has fired or reassigned over 10,000 employees, "including high-ranking police, who were found to have tortured prisoners, accepted bribes or had ties to militias..," with more than half of those having ties to militia groups.

With allies like the Iraqi police, who need enemies?

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