Iraq Begins to Rein In Paramilitary Force

'Out of Control' Guard Unit Established by U.S. Suspected in Death Squad-Style Executions

By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, May 14, 2006; Page A16

BAGHDAD, May 13 -- Iraq's Interior Ministry has taken its first steps to rein in the Facilities Protection Service, a unit of 4,000 building guards that U.S. officials say has quietly burgeoned into the government's largest paramilitary force, with 145,000 armed men and no central command, oversight or paymaster.

Last month, Interior Minister Bayan Jabr accused the Facilities Protection Service, known as the FPS, of carrying out some of the killings widely attributed to death squads operating inside his ministry's police forces. A senior U.S. military official, speaking on condition that he not be identified further, said Saturday he believed that members of the FPS, along with private militias, were the chief culprits behind Iraq's death squads.

L. Paul Bremer, then U.S. administrator of Iraq, signed an order establishing the Facilities Protection Service in 2003, aiming to free American troops from guarding Iraqi government property and preventing the kind of looting that erupted with the entry of U.S. forces and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

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Although the FPS guards are not police officers, they were allowed to wear variations of the blue uniform of Iraqi police. Many witnesses and survivors of death squad-style attacks have said the assailants were dressed in police uniforms.

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However, one former adviser in Iraq said he believes that at least some of the death squads come from the special police commando squads that the United States helped establish.

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