Iraq arrests 50 over coup plot: security official

Iraq arrested about 50 interior ministry officials accused of plotting a coup against the Shiite-led government, a senior security official said on Thursday.

"Fifty interior ministry civil servants, including senior officials, were arrested over the past three days for trying to topple the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki," the official told reporters on condition of anonymity.

The New York Times earlier reported that some of the arrested officials were accused of quietly working to reconstitute Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party.

The arrests,according to the paper, included four generals, one of whom, Gen. Ahmed Abu Raghif, who is the ministry’s director of internal affairs. It reported that the arrests had come at the hand of an elite counterterrorism force that reports directly to the office of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

Denial

In the meantime, an Iraqi security official denied that General Abu Raghif was among the dozens of officials arrested.

"General Abu Raghif is in his office and was never arrested. On the contrary, it was his service which was tasked with arresting the suspects," an Iraqi official said on condition of anonymity.

The involvement of the counterterrorism unit speaks to the seriousness of the accusations, and 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, according to the New York Times.

None of the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the subject, provided details to the paper about that allegation.

Political challenges

The paper reported that the arrests reflect a new set of political challenges for Iraq. Maliki, who has gained popularity as a strong leader but has few reliable political allies, has scrambled to protect himself from domestic rivals as the domineering influence of the United States, his leading backer, begins to fade.

Rumors of coups, conspiracies and new alliances abound in the Iraqi capital a month before provincial elections. Critics of Maliki say he has been using arrests to consolidate power.

But senior security officials said there was significant evidence tying those arrested to a wide array of political corruption charges, including affiliation with al-Awda (the Return), a descendant of the Baath Party, which ruled the country as a dictatorship for 35 years, mostly under Saddam Hussein.

Tens of thousands of Iraqis died or were persecuted, including Maliki, a Shiite Muslim, by the Baath Party. It was outlawed after the American invasion in 2003.

While most members of the Baath Party were Sunni Muslims, as Saddam Hussein was, those arrested were a mix of Sunnis and Shiites, several officials said. It was unclear precisely how many Interior Ministry officials were detained.

A high-ranking Interior Ministry official said that those affiliated with Al Awda had paid bribes to other officers to recruit them and that huge amounts of money had been found in raids.

Maliki’s office declined to comment to the paper. But one of his advisers, insisting that he not be named because he was not authorized to speak, said the detainees were involved in “a conspiracy.”

The Ministry of the Interior is dedicated to Iraq’s internal security, and includes the police forces. The ministry has a history of being heavily infiltrated with Shiite militias, though it has improved considerably over the past two years.

Corruption

The New York Times reported that a police officer, who knows several of the detainees but spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said they were innocent, longstanding civil servants and had little in common with one another. “Those who once belonged to the Baath Party were lower-level members,” he said, insisting that the arrests were politically motivated.

Interior Minister Jawad Kadem al-Bolani, who has not been implicated and is out of the country, has his own political ambitions and has been expanding his secular Iraqi Constitutional Party. Iraq is a nation where leadership has often changed by coup, and as next month’s provincial elections approach, worry about violence is increasing. So are accusations about politically charged detentions.

The counterterrorism unit involved in these arrests is alleged to have
conducted a raid this summer on the Diyala provincial governor’s office, during which an employee was killed and a provincial council member, one of the few Sunnis Arabs on the council, was arrested.

At a later protest against the arrest, several other Sunni politicians were detained. A number of politicians who follow the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, and who have set themselves up as political rivals to the prime minister, have also been arrested over the past months and charged with terrorist activities, according to the paper.

Beyond political intrigue and tensions among various factions in Iraq, corruption is also a major impediment to the country's recovery and development.

U.S. officials said on Wednesday the Iraqi government has yet to try a single senior official on corruption charges and ministers routinely shield political allies from prosecution.

Embassy officials painted a bleak picture of official misconduct in the government of Maliki, who heads a fragile coalition struggling to heal political divisions and lead Iraq out of more than five years of war.

Since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, Iraq has been awash in money and opportunities for graft, including massive U.S.-funded reconstruction projects, billions of dollars in oil revenues and nascent institutions with little oversight.