13 Convicted Insurgents Are Executed in Iraq

Iraqi authorities Thursday hanged 13 prisoners, including a woman, convicted of being insurgents, said an official who was present.

The executions, which were authorized by the Iraqi government, were the first to involve insurgents. It was the second time since Saddam Hussein’s ouster in 2003 that the death penalty was carried out.

The hangings come at a time when interim Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari’s bid to keep his position in a new government has been questioned by Iraqi political factions.

“The prime minister is not soft,” said Bassam Ridha, a Jafari advisor who witnessed the executions. He dismissed the timing as coincidence.

“The new Iraq will have to have a different flavor -- harsh on the criminals,” Ridha said. “Maybe Saddam will come soon.”

Hussein faces the death penalty on charges that he was responsible for the deaths of 148 villagers from Dujayl.

Hundreds of prisoners are on death row in the capital.

The U.S. military, meanwhile, confirmed plans to close the notorious Abu Ghraib prison within the next few months. The facility on the western outskirts of Baghdad will be handed over to the Iraqi government after the prisoners are transferred to other detention facilities in Iraq, said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, the U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad.

The planned closure of the prison is part of a wider U.S. effort to hand over authority and facilities to the Iraqi government in preparation for an eventual American troop withdrawal.

The executions, which were videotaped, took place at an undisclosed location in Baghdad and were witnessed by Ridha, a judge and several clerks. Three additional prisoners were scheduled to be hanged but couldn’t be brought to Baghdad because of security concerns, Ridha said. The 13 prisoners were given a last meal and time to pray before their execution, he said.

Political leaders have criticized the interim prime minister for not being tough enough and for poor handling of a recent wave of sectarian violence that left hundreds dead.

A group of Kurdish, Sunni Arab and secular parties spearheaded by President Jalal Talabani has tried to scuttle Jafari’s nomination to lead the next government, creating a political crisis.

On Thursday, however, Iraqi politicians reached a compromise by agreeing to convene parliament March 19, paving the way for the formation of a new government.

Talabani and others had resisted a delay sought by the dominant Shiite bloc.

While politicians inside Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone have wrangled bitterly over who should lead the next government, violence has continued across Iraq.

On Thursday, explosions and killings in Baghdad claimed the lives of at least 13 people, police and hospital officials said. The attacks included a bombing that killed three people and injured 10 others near a Sunni mosque in a predominantly Shiite neighborhood in southeastern Baghdad.

A second explosion -- targeting an Iraqi army patrol in Baghdad’s Amiriya neighborhood -- killed six people, including a child. Nine people were critically wounded. All were civilians.

Outside a hospital in central Baghdad, a bomb killed two police commandos who had brought in four colleagues shot in a western Baghdad neighborhood. Seven civilians were injured.

A woman who worked for a human rights group in the Green Zone was gunned down as she left her west Baghdad home. Earlier in the day, a teacher was shot by gunmen in Dora, on Baghdad’s southern edge.

Officials at the Interior Ministry said Thursday that they were investigating an incident the previous day in which 33 employees of a security company were taken away by men wearing police uniforms. Authorities initially said 50 workers were seized.

U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch confirmed that the gunmen wore Iraqi police commando uniforms but said that neither the U.S. military nor the Iraqi authorities knew what had happened to the employees.

“True, they were wearing [police commando] uniforms, but they were not my men and there are no arrests without an arrest warrant from the judge,” said Gen. Rasheed Flaih, who is in charge of the special police commando units.

An executive of Al Rawafid Security Co., who requested anonymity so as not to jeopardize the missing employees, said that in an effort to obtain information on their whereabouts, the company had contacted militia groups believed to have infiltrated the police department and the Interior Ministry.

“We’re talking to everybody including the Badr Brigade and Al Mahdi army.”

Speaking by phone from Jordan, the executive said that the kidnappers also took about $40,000 from the offices. A witness said a group of men arrived at the company in Baghdad’s Zayouna neighborhood Wednesday night, driving 10 unmarked cars and pickup trucks. Some were dressed in suits. Others wore police fatigues and helmets. The men rounded up the security guards and loaded them into the vehicles.

“It could be security companies [fighting] between each other, or it could have been a gang,” Flaih said.