Bodies of 14 Interior Ministry employees, who earlier were
allegedly kidnapped by a Sunni militant group, were found in Diyala
Province, northeast of Baghdad, Interior Ministry spokesman said on
Friday.
"14 bodies were found Friday afternoon in Diyala Province
northeast of Baghdad", Brigadier General Abdul Karim Khalaf, the
ministry's director of operations, told a press conference.
Earlier in the day, an extremist Sunni militant group, linked to
the al-Qaida group in Iraq, said it had kidnapped 18 employees of
the Shiite-led interior ministry and threatened to kill them to
avenge the alleged rape of an Iraqi woman.
"Lions from the Islamic state in Iraq succeeded in arresting 18
members of the interior ministry in Diyala in response to what
these apostates have done in fighting the Sunnis, and one of the
irrecent act is the rape of our sister in religion," the group said
in an internet statement.
The statement demanded the government to hand over the accused
officers to the militants and to release all the women detained in
the governmental prisons.
Last month, a 20-year-old woman from western Baghdad accused
three Iraqi policemen of sexually assaulting her, but the Iraqi
government rejected the accusation.
Rape victims in the conservative Iraqi society rarely go to
publicity because they fear public scorn and humiliation.
(Xinhua News Agency March 3, 2007)
