http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2005-07/12/article02.shtml
The Association of Muslim Scholars, the main Sunni religious authority in Iraq, said US-trained Iraqi commandos had arrested and tortured eleven civilians for no reason other than being Sunnis.
In an impromptu press conference in its Baghdad headquarters Monday, July 12, the AMS said ten of the detainees, all members of the Sunni Al-Zawbai tribe, suffocated to death after having been locked for hours in an airtight container.
The incident took place Sunday, July 10, afternoon when Iraqi police commandos arrested a group of family members from the village of Radwaniya, some 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of Baghdad, who went to Al-Nour hospital in Al-Shula district to visit some relatives.
They were taken to a police detention center where they were tortured and locked in an airtight and overheated container.
Ten of the detainees breathed their last, while the eleventh, Mohammad Ahmad Al-Zawbai, survived.
Zawbai appeared at the news conference and described to reporters their ordeal.
“Once they knew that I hail from the Sunni Al-Zawbai tribe, they opened a salvo of swear words, beat me, stole my cellular phone and put me along with 10 of my relatives inside a completely sealed container for more than 16 hours.”
The Iraqi government acknowledged on July 3 that some of its security elements had tortured prisoners in a bid to curb what it called a rising “Sunni insurgency.”
AMS Secretary General Harith Al-Dari said Al-Nour hospital has become “a business center for intelligence agents and militias affiliated to a party in the government coalition.”
He charged that they “stop and detain young people on the spot if they hail from Al-Zawbai tribe.”
Dari said Iraqis are resolved to kick out the US-led occupation troops no matter how many “honest” Iraqis they lose in the process.
“Kill hundreds, kill thousands, but the Iraqis will remain steadfast in their uphill struggle to liberate their country and teach the outlaws and criminals a lesson,” added an outraged Dari.
It was not immediately clear whether Dari was referring to the Badr Organization of the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a main player in the United Iraqi Alliance, which won the lion