8 caught after Baghdad breakout from police

BAGHDAD: Eight out of 15 drug trafficking suspects have been recaptured ater escaping custody in a Baghdad police station, Iraq’s interior ministry said, as the breakout prompted several dismissals.

“The search continues to find the others,” a police officer said, on condition of anonymity.

The 15 suspected members of a drug trafficking network escaped custody on Saturday, ater having “insulted the police, then beaten them”, according to a security services official.

The interior ministry said eight had been recaptured without specifying where they were being held.

Baghdad’s police chief and the heads of Al-russafa police department in the capital’s east and the station where the suspects pulled off their escape have all been fired, the ministry said.

On social media, images of video surveillance purported to be from the police station shows men in civilian clothing running through a door, apparently without any resistance.

No one in uniform is visible in the footage. Prison security is a critical issue in Iraq, where escapes are not uncommon, whether by violence or bribery.

Iraq is the 12th most corrupt country in the world, according to Transparency International, and experts have pointed to high levels of corruption in its prisons.

During the insurrection and sectarian violence that followed the 2003 Us-led invasion, hundreds of extremists were able to escape from prison.

Iraq is currently seeking to try thousands of local and foreign extremists, while keeping them in overcrowded prisons.

Many prisons have been rendered unusable by repeated conflicts.

The sale and use of drugs have been booming in Iraq. Authorities regularly announce the seizure of narcotics and the arrest of traffickers, particularly along the border with Iran.

In an unrelated development, around $10 million in aid for the displaced in northern Iraq’s Nineveh province, where the Daesh group was based, has been embezzled by its fugitive exgovernor, the country’s anti-corruption commission said on Tuesday.

A spokesperson for the Integrity Commission told reporters that its investigators had uncovered “invoices from developers in Iraqi Kurdistan”.

But, he added, “no receipt was found” for these debited sums, which were meant for the rehabilitation of two hospitals in the northern metropolis of Mosul, capital of Nineveh.