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Allawi: Iraq abuses as bad as under Saddam
(AP)
Updated: 2005-11-28 08:37

Iraq's former interim prime minister complained Sunday that human rights abuses by some in the new government are as bad now as they were under Saddam Hussein.

Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite Muslim, told the London newspaper The Observer that fellow Shiites are responsible for death squads and secret torture centers and said brutality by elements of Iraqi security forces rivals that of Saddam's secret police.

"People are remembering the days of Saddam. These were the precise reasons that we fought Saddam and now we are seeing the same thing," the newspaper quoted Allawi as saying.

In Canada, meanwhile, a Parliament official said four aid workers, including two Canadians, had been kidnapped in Iraq but refused to name their group or say where they were seized. Britain's Foreign Office identified one of the four as Norman Kember, a Briton, but provided no further details.

Elizabeth Colton, a U.S. Embassy spokeswoman, said the United States was investigating whether an American also was among the missing.

Most international organizations fled Iraq last year following a wave of kidnappings and beheadings of foreign and Iraqi hostages. Many of them were carried out by al-Qaida in Iraq, led by the Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The U.S. military reported that a Marine assigned to the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing was killed Saturday when his vehicle struck a roadside bomb near Camp Taqaddum, 45 miles west of Baghdad. At least 2,106 U.S. military personnel have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

A woman shouts as she holds the pictures of her sons and a poster reading: Where are my sons?, during a protest in front of Iraq's Human Rights Ministry, in Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday, Nov. 27, 2005.
A woman shouts as she holds the pictures of her sons and a poster reading: Where are my sons?, during a protest in front of Iraq's Human Rights Ministry, in Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday, Nov. 27, 2005. [AP]
Allawi's allegation of widespread human rights abuses follows the discovery this month of up to 173 detainees, some malnourished and showing signs of torture, in a Shiite-led Interior Ministry building in Baghdad.

"People are doing the same as Saddam's time and worse," he said. "It is an appropriate comparison."

His remarks appeared aimed at winning favor among the Sunni Arab minority as well as secular Shiites ahead of the Dec. 15 parliamentary elections. Allawi is running on a secular ticket that includes several prominent Sunnis.

During his tenure as prime minister, Allawi lost the support of many Shiites because he brought back former members of Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime back into the security services to bolster the fight against insurgents.
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