(via the Jawa Report) This from USA Today.
BAGHDAD (AP) — The Iraqi Interior Ministry has ordered police to round up beggars, vagabonds and mentally disabled people from the streets of Baghdad to prevent them from being used by insurgents as suicide bombers, a spokesman said Tuesday.
The decision came after a series of suicide attacks, including two female bombers who struck pet markets in Baghdad on Feb. 1, killing nearly 100 people. Iraqi and U.S. officials have said the women were mentally disabled and apparently unwitting bombers.
The people detained in the Baghdad sweep will be handed over to governmental institutions that can provide shelter and care for them, Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said.
“This will be implemented nationwide starting today,” Khalaf told the Associated Press in a telephone interview.
“Militant groups, like al-Qaeda in Iraq, have started exploiting these people in a very bad manner to kill innocents because they do not raise suspicions,” Khalaf said. “These groups are either luring those who are desperate for money to help them in their attacks or making use of their poor mental condition to use them as suicide bombers.”
Of course given what we know about Al Qaeda, I don’t know if handing them off to shelters will help.
The acting director of a Baghdad psychiatric hospital has been arrested on suspicion of supplying al-Qaeda in Iraq with the mentally impaired women that it used to blow up two crowded animal markets in the city on February 1, killing about 100 people.
While liberals like to complain that we don’t do enough to help the homeless, despite the massive number of government programs and private groups established to help those suffering, the terrorists actively recruit/force the less fortunate to kill themselves and murder other innocent people.
