British forces destroyed the headquarters of an Iraqi police unit yesterday after moving 78 prisoners whom they feared might be killed by rogue officers, a military spokesman said.
"The jamiaat doesn't exist anymore," said Major Charlie Burbridge, using an Arabic term for police station.
"It was destroyed using explosives," he said, referring to the Basra headquarters of the local Serious Crimes Unit.
PHOTO: AFP
A reporter at the scene confirmed that buildings in the compound in central Basra had been leveled and that British troops had left the area.
"We deployed a significant number of soldiers in Basra in the early hours of this morning with a view to disbanding the Serious Crimes Unit and the police station from which the unit operates," Burbridge said.
"The Serious Crimes Unit is in the process of being disbanded," he added.
The police chief in this restive southern port city made no initial comment on the operation, but promised to hold a news conference later in the day.
British troops decided to launch the raid yesterday amid concerns that Iraqi officers, who have been accused of a string of atrocities in Basra, might kill their prisoners before the unit is wound up, Burbridge said.
"There were 76 prisoners, not 178 as we first thought. They've been secured and we've moved them to an alternative Iraqi detention facility," he said.
Burbridge said there were "very few" officers at the station when the raid took place and that, while there had been no resistance as yet, the British force was prepared for and expected retaliatory attacks from local gunmen.
Last week hundreds of British troops backed with armored vehicles arrested a senior officer in the Basra Serious Crimes Unit and accused him of ordering the murder of 17 staff at a British-run police academy.
British forces have overall security responsibility in Basra province and plans to hand over control to local forces have been made harder by large-scale infiltration of police units by local political and tribal militias.
On Oct. 29, unidentified gunmen ambushed a bus carrying 17 employees of a British-run police training academy back to their homes in Basra.
The passengers were murdered and their bodies dumped around the Shuaiba area in what was seen as an attempt to intimidate local residents and as a direct challenge to the British mission to pacify the region.
British officials said last week that they had arrested an officer who was thought to have been involved in the massacre and that evidence gathered at the scene of the raid was thought to be enough to hold him.
Many Iraqi police units are known to have been infiltrated by Shiite militias, who use police uniforms and weapons to pursue private political battles and to carry out sectarian killings against the country's Sunni minority.
On Sept. 19 last year, in one of the most spectacular clashes of the campaign by British forces, soldiers stormed a Basra Serious Crimes Unit compound after two special forces troopers were captured by militants.
The commandos, reportedly members of the Special Air Service on an undercover mission in civilian clothes, were freed by negotiation from a separate location, but the police base was badly damaged in the raid.
British troops in southern Iraq receive almost daily fire from militias armed with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, but still hope to allow local Iraqi forces to take the lead in providing security next year.
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