SYDNEY, 18 July 2004 — An Australian journalist yesterday claimed that Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi shot seven Iraqi insurgents with a pistol at a Baghdad police station in the week preceding the handover of power from the United States last month.

Paul McGeough, writing in The Sydney Morning Herald, said two unnamed witnesses to the execution-style killings told him Allawi shot seven insurgents, six of whom died.

He quoted the witnesses as saying the prisoners — handcuffed and blindfolded — were lined up against a wall and shot in a courtyard adjacent to the maximum-security cell block in which they were held at the Al-Amariyah security center, in the city’s southwestern suburbs.

Allawi’s office has denied the claims, saying the interim leader had not visited the prison and does not carry a gun.

McGeough said he could not name the witnesses but said neither knew the other had spoken to him about the allegation.

“The prime minister is said to have responded that they deserved worse than death, that each was responsible for killing more than 50 Iraqis each and at that point he is said to have pulled a gun and proceeded to aim at and shoot all seven,” McGeough told Australia’s ABC Television.

About a dozen Iraqi policemen, and four Americans, bodyguards to Allawi, witnessed the killings, McGeough said.

McGeough, the Baghdad correspondent for the Herald, said he was told Allawi wanted to show police an example of how they should deal with insurgents.

McGeough said one of the witnesses described those shot as “Wahabis, the Iraqi colloquialism for foreign fighters who have come into the country or local Iraqis who have taken on their jihad.”

A spokesman for Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said the Australian government could not substantiate the claims.

“We, as a country, know nothing about these allegations and we’ve checked with the Americans and the British, who also know nothing about these allegations,” the spokesman said. “None of the authorities in Iraq that we’ve been able to contact know anything about them.”