Iraqi employees of Baghdad International Airport shut down the facility for two hours to protest the killing of an Iraqi engineer by American soldiers near a checkpoint, an airline official told Babylon & Beyond.

An engineer named Karim Obaid Bardan was shot dead in his car after he allegedly failed to stop or slow down as he neared a checkpoint before dawn Sunday morning, a U.S. military spokesman told the Associated Press.

An official at Iraqi Airways, speaking on condition of anonymity, said outraged airport personnel closed down the airport for two hours in protest. "Why such killing?" the Iraqi official demanded. "Where is the security agreement between the government and the U.S.? Was this the democracy they brought to us? Democracy of killing?"

He added of the victim, "He was an official going to his job."

-- Los Angeles Times Baghdad bureau

Baghdad’s scourge of mysterious killings continues almost seven months after a national election that has so far failed to produce a government.   Assailants regularly target their victims with silencer pistols or small bombs.  

In the latest such attack, a police officer was gunned down in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Khadra on Monday morning, according to police sources.  On Sunday, gunmen with silencers killed a civil servant from the cabinet. Also killed in other attacks were an official from Iraq’s anti-corruption commission; a lieutenant colonel in the police’s counter-terrorism unit; and an army major, police said. In a separate attack, a state television announcer was wounded when assailants planted a bomb on his car Monday.  Another state television announcer was killed a few weeks ago in a near-identical attack.

Officials living in the Green Zone will have to endure the same electricity shortages as other Iraqis following a decision to ax their special privileges in the wake of violent protests over prolonged power outages.

Acting Electricity Minister Hussein Shahristani, who is also the oil minister, announced the measure today at his first news conference since taking over the electricity portfolio Wednesday after the resignation of the previous minister.

“We have made the decision to cut all exceptional supplies of electricity for officials, starting with the Green Zone, as well as other [official] neighborhoods in Baghdad,” Shahristani said.

Last week, the Los Angeles Times revealed the existence of a secret Iraqi government prison that operated from last fall until its closure this month.

Human Rights Watch has now interviewed detainees who had been held in the facility. The detainees described in detail to Human Rights Watch the torture allegations first mentioned in the Los Angeles Times report. Below are the findings, in a formal release issued by Human Rights Watch.

Iraq: Detainees Describe Torture in Secret Jail

Detainees in a secret Baghdad detention facility were hung upside-down, deprived of air, kicked, whipped, beaten, given electric shocks, and sodomized, Human Rights Watch said today. Iraq should thoroughly investigate and prosecute all government and security officials responsible, Human Rights Watch said. 

Human Rights Watch interviewed 42 of the men in the Al Rusafa Detention Center on April 26, 2010. They were among about 300 detainees transferred from the secret facility in the old Muthanna airport in West Baghdad to Al Rusafa into a special block of 19 cage-type cells over the past several weeks, after the existence of the secret prison was revealed. 

The men’s stories were credible and consistent. Most of the 300 displayed fresh scars and injuries they said were a result of routine and systematic torture they had experienced at the hands of interrogators at Muthanna. All were accused of aiding and abetting terrorism, and many said they were forced to sign false confessions. 

When Baghdadis awoke this morning to find their streets sealed off and the city under virtual lockdown, the rumors began to fly.

Army officers had staged a coup in the Green Zone, one version said. No, it was Baathists loyal to the former regime who had taken over, according to another.

Mostly, the rumors concerned the Sunni lawmaker Saleh Mutlak, who has been recommended for disbarment from the upcoming March elections by the former De-Baathification Committee, now known as the Accountability and Justice Committee.

Mutlak had been assassinated, according to the most widespread rumor, a variation of which had Mutlak staging the coup in the Green Zone. The Mutlak rumors reached Kurdistan, where anxious travelers fretted over whether it would be safe to fly back to Baghdad.

At midday, government officials appeared on television to calm the capital.

"The security forces can't stage a coup. Our security forces are professional," military spokesman Mohammed Askari told a news conference. "The era of coups is gone."

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has turned the heat up on his Arab neighbors after last month’s double bombings at the foreign and finance ministries, which killed about 100 people. Maliki and his government have repeatedly accused Syria of providing shelter to those behind the blasts. Syria has denied the charge, and some Iraqi politicians have raised serious questions about whether Syria or the Baath Party was involved.

Today, Maliki once more slammed his neighbors. “We will continue looking [for a way] to close all the gaps and the doors from which the killers can breathe again. We censure the others from our brothers, friends and the neighborly countries,” Maliki said on a visit to the southern city of Karbala. “They used to say that they are with us and they did stand with us in certain situations, but how can we describe the practice of embracing the killers. To where will they be exported [next] time, to Iraq again or to a different country? Can the evil be contained to one specific country?” 

Maliki has asked the U.N. Security Council to establish a formal investigation into the bombings. He has also accused Syrian intelligence agents of sitting in on a meeting in July of Baath Party officials and Islamic militants. The government sees it as the latest episode in which Syria has allegedly been complicit in the activities of anti-Iraq militants. Iraqi security officials confirmed today that they had sent additional security forces to reinforce the vast Syria-Iraq border. 

Since the bombings, the government has revived the practice of showing taped confessions from alleged militants. Two confessions have been shown on state television and a third was aired at a news conference. The first confession was of an Iraqi arrested for the Aug. 19 attack, who blamed Baath Party leaders in Syria for planning the attack. The other confessions have shown foreign fighters recounting their alleged travels through Syria. There is no way to verify whether the taped remarks were genuine or staged.  But they mark a concerted effort to blame Syria in part for recent security breaches.

On Wednesday and Thursday, the state channel broadcast the purported confessions of an alleged fighter from Yemen named Mohammed Oud.

The following are excerpts from the broadcast:

A major Shiite pilgrimage went smoothly Saturday in Baghdad, marking a success for Iraqi security forces after the departure of most US troops from the cities.

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Why do young Saudi men keep popping up to do bad things in dangerous places?

Saudi militants are instigating terror and death from Yemen to Europe and from Iraq to Pakistan. The Saudi government has been attempting to calm jihadist passions by enrolling extremists in reform schools and silencing radical preachers. There has been progress, but the kingdom’s ultra-conservative brand of Wahhabi Islam keeps churning out those with masked faces and crisscrossed bandoliers.

Tariq Alhomayed, editor of the English-language daily Asharq Al-Awsat, explored the problem Saudi Arabia and the Arab world face in an opinion piece headlined: "Saudi Youth and Terrorism: When Will It End?"

“The ideological war in Saudi Arabia [against extremism] continues to be fought but below the expected level, even though the Saudi media is fiercely in opposition to extremism and the extremists, and there is a social aversion to Al Qaeda, the takfiris, and those who support them,” writes Alhomayed. “But despite this we continue to witness the destruction of our youth.”

He adds: “We should blame ourselves.”

Read the rest of the story here.

-- Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo

Photo: The aftermath of a suicide bombing in Baghdad. Credit: Reuters

Iraqis stopped to smell the roses this week as they visited the first  Baghdad flower festival since the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime.  The exhibit at  Zawra Park in the center of Baghdad was another sign of people’s wish for normalcy after years of bloodshed.

The exhibition was advertised with the slogan “Baghdad, Flowers and Peace” and had Arab and foreign companies displaying their products.

By Usama Redha in Baghdad

My recollections of the beginnings of the Iraq war in 2003 and how life has changed since then:

MARCH 2003

I had lost all hopes of changing my life, getting a real job or at least leaving Iraq because I was not a Baathist. I used to stay awake until 3 or 4 am listening to the radio reports and news about the possibility of toppling Saddam. The regime jammed the radio stations and the broadcasts often faded out amid static and hissing.

I had many officers’ friends. We used to talk about the situation. It was the favorite question for Iraqis: Will Bush strike or not? Was he serious? Day after day the situation was escalating, people were preparing for a long war. They were buying plastic jugs to store water, dates, fuel, and all the necessary things to avoid leaving their homes. They dug wells behind their houses, but the ground water was considered a carrier for typhoid, cholera, and amoebic dysentery.

A car bomb killed at least 18 people and injured 40 today in a Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad. It was the second major blast in the capital in a week and a reminder of the fragile state of security as American troops prepare to leave Iraq's cities.

The latest attack occurred in the northeastern neighborhood of Shaab, a mainly Shiite district once controlled by militiamen loyal to Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr. Like most of the capital, in recent months the neighborhood has seen a sharp drop in violence. Police said today's blast occurred shortly after midday in a busy area near a bus terminal and small market. Among the dead were children, according to initial reports.

On Monday, a bomb in western Baghdad's Abu Ghraib district killed at least nine people, and another blast that day killed 18 people north of Baghdad in Diyala province.

U.S. military officials say violence is at its lowest level across Iraq in more than five years, but rarely does a day go by without at least one report of a bombing or assassination somewhere in the country. Under a U.S. plan to reduce the number of American forces in Iraq, American troops are to withdraw from bases in cities and towns by the end of this summer. President Obama has said that by August 2010 all combat troops will be gone from Iraq, leaving 35,000 to 50,000 forces to serve as advisors and trainers to Iraqi security forces.

—  Times staff writers