KARBALA, Iraq - Iraqi police in the Shiite shrine city of Karbala have arrested five men wanted in connection with 721 murders committed over a period of 18 months, a senior officer said on Wednesday.Major General Raed Shaker Jawdat, head of police in the central city, said the men were questioned about the sectarian murders and they said the victims were loyalists of the Baath party of executed dictator Saddam Hussein. "When we searched the background (of the victims), we found that only 11 of the 721 were in fact Baathists," Jawdat said.
He said the five men in custody were supected of leading a criminal gang of some 150 people.
Investigators have found mass graves containing the victims of the wave of killings, some of them women or children. Police did not give a date for the arrests, saying only that they were made recently.
Police identified the suspects as Ali Abdel Taan, who is also known as Ali Shariia, Sayed Monadhel, Muhsen Shariia, Haidar Jouri and Razzak al-Samman. The suspects are also accused of torturing their victims at a mosque.