NEW YORK, Aug. 10 (UPI) -- The Kurdish-backed Al Ahali newspaper in an article Friday reported on the British government's decision not to grant asylum to Iraqi translators who worked with the British army.
The article said tens of translators worked with the British army since 2003. These translators, the paper said, go out on raids with the army and have to cover their faces fearing revenge. And now that the British forces might leave next year, their lives would be in even greater danger.
The paper said many translators had been kidnapped and killed in Basra by insurgents. Some of them, the paper said, were tortured before being killed.
"When the Danish troops left last month, they took 200 translators and their families with them," the paper said.
In another report, Al Ahali said Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi demanded an end to the Ministry of State for National Security Affairs because "the ministry has been a shame on Iraq. Iraqis don't want a security and intelligence system that follows them the same way the former government used to do."
The report quoted Hashimi as saying the ministry had a never-ending budget and branches all over the country. He also said the ministry had been infiltrated.
"According to the constitution, the Ministry of State for National Security Affairs had to have around 17 employees, but the reality says it is more than 1,400 employees that are working in branches distributed all over the cities in Iraq," he told the paper.
Al Mashriq newspaper quoted police sources as saying clashes broke out in Adhamiya, a Sunni-majority area, near Abu Hanifa mosque between Iraqi forces and insurgents. Iraqi police told Al Mashriq that "a number of the insurgents were killed yet we don't know how many." A high-ranking Iraqi security source said a large weapons cache was found inside the mosque.
