Iraq Interior Ministry ‘coup plotters’ ordered released

On December 18, The New York Times reported that dozens of pro-Ba’ath officials in Iraq’s Interior Ministry had been arrested while “in the early stages of planning a coup”. The arrestees, four of whom have the rank of General, had been detained by “an elite counterterrorism force” controlled directly by the office of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. A day later, however, Iraq’s Minister of the Interior, Jawad al-Bolani, told the Associated Press that a judge had ordered the arrestees to be released, reportedly “after determining there was no evidence that they conspired to bring back Saddam Hussein’s banned Baath party”. Read more of this post