BAGHDAD, 21 February 2007 — Allegations that a squad of Iraqi policemen enforcing a new Baghdad security plan took turns to rape a young Sunni woman fed sectarian tensions at the summit of the Iraqi government yesterday. Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki’s office dismissed the woman’s complaint out of hand, and accused Sunni politicians of exploiting the drama to undermine a joint US-Iraqi operation to quell factional fighting in the capital.
But an aide to Iraq’s Sunni vice president denounced the Shiite premier’s response, and claimed initial medical tests carried out at a hospital run by the American military showed the woman had been sexually assaulted. The row came at a delicate moment for “Operation Fardh Al-Qanoon,” which has provoked a savage response from insurgent car bombers determined to humiliate Maliki by stepping up their attacks on civilian and military targets.
The day saw yet more bombings as suspected Sunni militants killed at least 21 people in and around the capital and, in one attack, blew up a tanker truck carrying dangerous chlorine gas in the northern suburb of Taji. In one deadly provocation in a Shiite district, a suicide bomber detonated a bomb belt under a tent set up for mourners at a memorial ceremony, killing at least seven people and wounding 20, officials said.
The rape allegation surfaced on Monday when a Sunni religious body accused police of raping a woman called Sabrin Al-Janabi, who repeated the charge herself in an interview with the satellite television network Al-Jazeera. “One of them hit me. I fell and my head hit the ground,” the alleged victim — the report described her as a 20-year-old married woman — said in the television interview, speaking from behind a veil.
“One of them raped me. Then another came and raped, and a third. I was screaming, crying and begging them, but he held my mouth so no one could hear,” she continued, calmly but with eyes moist with tears. “Someone came and said to them, ‘Are you done? Can we come and take our turn?’ But one of them said, ‘No, there’s an American patrol coming’.” The woman said she was brought before a judge to be arraigned, then taken back by police, raped again, beaten on the thigh with a rubber hose and threatened that she would be killed if she made a complaint.
Maliki’s office initially promised a full inquiry then, just four hours later, issued a second statement formally denying the allegations and ordering that the accused officers be commended. “It appeared that after a medical investigation that Sabrin Al-Janabi had not been sexually abused at all,” the statement from Maliki’s office said.
“The aim of this fabrication by some known groups is to sow confusion about the security plan and tarnish the reputation of our forces which are tracking terrorist organizations and working to stabilize Baghdad,” it said.
