Word: basra
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...court order, Dhahir arrested a man who turned out to be the son of a prominent member of Saddam's ruling Baath Party. Dhahir was arrested in the man's place. He spent 17 days in jail, was demoted and got transferred 300 miles south to the city of Basra. (His arrest, he says, was ordered by then Minister of Interior Muhammad Zimam Abd al-Razaq, who on Feb. 15 was arrested by Iraqi police...
...Islamic groups like al-Sadr's religious militia, Jaish al-Mahdi, are declaring themselves guardians of peace and justice. Many groups keep private armies, but al-Sadr's men also maintain courts and prisons in eight southern Iraqi cities and Baghdad. Religious militia have shut down liquor stores in Basra and Baghdad and even killed some of their owners. In Najaf, CD sellers accused of peddling pornography have had their shops bombed. The court's claim of religious sanction is particularly potent in Najaf, where portraits of religious leaders have replaced statues of Saddam Hussein. While al-Sadr's critics...
...long-term stability. But seven months after the fall of Baghdad, a wave of revenge killings is sweeping Iraq. An investigation by TIME found that at least a dozen former intelligence officials have been killed in shootings in Baghdad since Oct. 1; several others have been wounded. In Basra, some 25 to 30 Baath Party members have been shot at point-blank range since mid-October. A U.S. intelligence official in Iraq says many of his colleagues are wary of revealing the true scale of the violence, in part because they have little ability to stop it and in part...
...sitting with his cousin Shahab Ahmed Hamid, catching a cool breeze on the front porch of the office of their Baghdad transportation company. Three men appeared in an old government truck. According to Hamid, the men initially said they wanted to discuss a business deal in Basra. But they soon pulled out pistols, hustled al-Falahi into a waiting black BMW and drove off. Two days later, police recovered the body of al-Falahi, with a single bullet through his forehead, from a roadside gutter in northern Baghdad...
...victims, it turns out, are not always the worst of Saddam's brutes. According to former intelligence officers, some of those who have been slain by vigilantes were low-level bureaucrats. Most of the two dozen or so Baathists killed recently in Basra were teachers. Some teachers had senior positions in the old regime, but many others had joined the Baath Party just to further their careers. An abandoned lot near the Education Ministry's building in Basra has become a dumping ground for bodies that sometimes show up with letters identifying them as Baath Party members...