From Holden:

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

[A] Sunni Muslim religious official said the tortured bodies of 11 Sunni Arabs, who had been killed execution-style with a bullet to the head, were found in Baghdad Tuesday after having been arrested by police commandos two days earlier.

[snip]

The Sunnis, including an imam prayer leader, were arrested in a police commando raid at their homes in northern Baghdad early Sunday, said the official of the Waqf religious organisation who did not want to be identified.

Their bodies were found dumped in the north of the city on Tuesday, he added and “all bore torture marks and bullet wounds to the back of the head.”

Hussein Ali Kamal, deputy minister for intelligence at the interior ministry, told AFP it was not known who was responsible for the killings.

“The minister has issued orders that nobody be arrested without a warrant,” he said.

“Every day we find innocent people killed and their bodies dumped in the streets. We don’t know who’s responsible. The minister has ordered that a special committee be set up to look into this very explosive issue.

“There are people who dress up in police or commandos uniforms to carry out, even at night, horrible attacks which are then blamed on police,” he said.

The head of the Waqf, Adnan al-Dulaimi, called Wednesday for an official investigation into the case and asked that its results be made public.

“This isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened,” Dulaimi said in a statement. “We want to know who is responsible for such horrible crimes.”

There have been numerous allegations of mistreatment and killings of Sunnis by special police forces over the past few months.