BAGHDAD, Aug 29 (AFP) - A criminal investigation was ongoing Sunday to determine how at least 25 people whose decomposing bodies were found Friday in the basement of a religious court in Najaf died, Iraq's prime minister has said.
"The Iraqi government will not be a spectator. Iraqi police are conducting an investigation to register all the facts," Iyad Allawi told state-run Iraqiya television in an interview late Saturday.
On Friday, police told reporters that the bodies, found in a court house set up by rebel cleric Moqtada Sadr, were executed by militiamen, but confusion reigns over how they died and why.
"A (forensic) team will investigate the dates of death, the causes of death and methods of torture. After all is done, the judicial system will have its say," Allawi said.
"I'm a specialist doctor. Medicine is my specialty. It could have been a month or two for the corpses to be rotten that way," he added.
But Sadr officials have said the bodies were Mehdi Army "martyrs" killed during three weeks of heavy fighting against US-led Iraqi government troops and taken to the court for safe keeping before burial.
Two AFP photographers saw militiamen carry blanket-clad bodies from Tussi and Sadek streets -- where the front line had been just a day earlier -- to the courthouse in the Old City.
Sadr's religious courts in Najaf, which were open to people from across the country, operated outside Iraq's secular law and were long denounced by the interim government and Najaf police force.