Arrests made at Iraqi Interior Ministry

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Arrests made at Iraqi Interior Ministry
Posted: 09:17 AM ET
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — Authorities this week seized between 20 and 30
Interior Ministry officials allegedly linked to an offshoot of Saddam Hussein’s
Baathist movement, a ministry spokesman said Thursday.

The arrests come ahead of next month’s Iraqi provincial elections, a
post-Saddam era watershed event that’s generating an uptick in civil unrest and
political infighting.

The detained have links to the al-Awda party — an underground successor
to Saddam Hussein’s Baath party, the movement that ruled Iraq for 35 years but
later was banned after Hussein was overthrown in the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of
Iraq.

There were no details about what the detained were accused of doing.
It is the latest problem facing the Interior Ministry — which oversees
policing, border enforcement and internal security but has been criticized by
Iraqi and U.S. officials for its inefficiency, corruption, and infiltration by
Shiite militia groups during the Sunni-Shiite violence in 2006 and 2007.

According to Interior Ministry spokesman, Major General Abdul Karim
Khalaf, the highest-ranking person taken into custody was a brigadier general
and the others were low-ranking officers. He said 23 officers were detained,
and judicial authorities were questioning them.