Monday, August 15, 2005

New Sabah paper had an interesting interview with the minister of interior yesterday where the minister displayed a number of the ministries latest achievements.
In the beginning he talked proudly of their efforts in the ministry in establishing a data base for suspects and criminals that includes all relevant information gathered from previous investigations and operations.
The minister explained that this is the first time they have such a relatively large data base which currently includes information about 6000 suspects and criminals in comparison with only 25 names when work on the data base began.
He also revealed that this amount of information helped in exposing 250 former criminals who infiltrated the staff of the ministry as new recruits.

This was done after comparing the personal files and finger prints of the 130,000 personnel in the ministry with the information on the data base and it was found that some finger prints of ministry personnel matched those taken from attacks scenes and unexploded IEDs.
Moving to the subject of the Ba'ath organizations and their activity, the minister told the newspaper that new cells of the Ba'ath have been formed with new leaderships and that their total members count "could reach up to 16,000 most of whom are under our surveillance" said the minister.

And regarding recent security operations, the minister pointed out that they were able to locate and assault a workshop that manufactures car bombs in Baghdad.
The workshop had the capacity to arm 8-10 cars with explosives/day. We found 450 liquid gas containers and 1800 mortar shells in the site as well as large amounts of wires, alarm clocks, remote control devices and bomb triggers


According to the minister, the assault was conducted after receiving calls from neighbors who were suspicious about the numerous cars that entered and leaved the workshop (which was actually a backyard of a house).
13 men were also arrested in the operation, 5 of whom are former Ba'ath members and the rest belong to a radical Islamist group and we left a force in the place expecting other members of the group to come and we arrested 15 more members from that terror group.

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