Iraq PM probes police rape allegations

HAMZA HENDAWI, Associated Press writer

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered an investigation Monday into allegations by a Sunni Arab woman that she was raped by three members of the Shiite-dominated police force after she was detained over the weekend. The 20-year-old married woman said the ordeal began when police commandos raided her house early Sunday in the Amil district of western Baghdad while her husband was not home. She said the commandos accused her of cooking for Sunni insurgents and took her to a police garrison where the attack occurred. "One of them put his hand on my mouth so no one outside the room could hear me," she said in a videotape taped by Associated Press Television news. "I told them `I did not know that an Iraqi could do this to another Iraqi.'" (...) The Association of Muslim Scholars, a hardline Sunni clerical group, said the alleged rape was a sign of "a moral genocide in which government forces play the leading role."..

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