Iraq prison violence
The father of a police officer slain in the prison rioting mourns at his funeral in Baghdad. (Reuters / May 8, 2011)
By Raheem Salman and Ned Parker, Los Angeles Times
May 8, 2011, 6:12 p.m.
Reporting from Baghdad— 
The suspected mastermind of October's gruesome massacre at a Baghdad church attempted a daring jailbreak Sunday and killed several police officers before he and his accomplices were shot dead.

The running battles inside a detention facility on the grounds of the Interior Ministry ended with 11 detainees and six officers dead, according to security commanders.

The predawn violence cast a disturbing light on Iraq'sdetention centers and security apparatus, which has been buffeted since last summer by a series of escapes and charges of political interference.

The prisoners Sunday overpowered guards and killed a senior counter-terrorism general and five others before they were detained or shot dead. It was unclear how many detainees participated in the mayhem that lasted several hours.

Huthaifa Batawi, the chief of an Al Qaeda affiliate in Baghdad blamed for the Baghdad church massacre that resulted in more than 50 deaths, managed to overpower a guard who was escorting him to the bathroom, said Gen. Dhiya Kinani, the head of the Interior Ministry's counter-terrorism branch.

"The terrorist was able to control the guard and took his weapon. He started to open fire," Kinani said. "When the manager of the department and his officers heard the shooting, they rushed to the scene. The manager of the department was injured and later died."

The prisoners then split off into two gangs: One group tried to flee and reached an outer gate where guards opened fire, killing two of them and wounding three others. Batawi, meanwhile, holed up in a jail corridor with other detainees.

"They asked them to surrender and raise their hands several times, but they refused," Kinani said. "They continued shooting … [and] the forces were forced to open fire and kill them."

Among the dead officers was counter-terrorism official Brig. Gen. Moayad Salah.

Security officials blamed Batawi for both the church attack, and 16 bombings in Baghdad one day in November, along with an assault the previous summer on Iraq's central bank.

Maj. Gen. Qasim Atta Mousawi, military spokesman for Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, said the rampage had been carefully plotted. "There has been a dereliction [of duty] in what has happened," Mousawi said. "The incident was preplanned."

Even as Kinani helped deliver the official version of events, contradictory accounts circulated, including one in which Batawi tried to drive out of the ministry grounds in a police car before being shot.

The latest incident had implications for Iraq's feuding coalition government, which has been unable to agree on selecting interior and defense ministers.

Politicians painted the incident as evidence of a breakdown in the command of Iraq's security apparatus, as American military forces are set to complete their withdrawal from the country by year's end.

"Security forces are politicized and working for the interest of political entities. We see such incidents are always happening on both the Iraqi street and in prisons," said Nabeel Haraboo, a lawmaker with the Iraqiya list, a secular bloc that has competed for power with Maliki.

Hakim Zamili, a lawmaker with Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr's movement, said Al Qaeda in Iraq members had access to phones and could plan activities from inside the jail.

Last summer, four detainees, including leaders of a militant umbrella group controlled by Al Qaeda in Iraq, escaped the Camp Cropper detention facility in Baghdad's airport compound, apparently with help from the warden. An Iraqi official said the warden had been forced into cooperating.

U.S. and Iraqi officials expressed alarm in November over the management of another major detention facility, Camp Taji, where members of Sadr's Mahdi Army militia had been granted de facto control over some of the wards.

An Iraqi official blamed the favoritism on efforts by political blocs to woo the Sadr camp as part of the government formation negotiations.
ned.parker@latimes.com,   Salman is a Times staff writer.