 | Oh this is really going to make the Euros all pissy. |
BAGHDAD - Some 150 to 160 Arab fighters have appeared in Iraqi courts charged with carrying out terrorist attacks and could face the death penalty if convicted, the justice minister told AFP. "The Arabs have been referred to Iraqi courts and the verdicts against these foreigners are due to be pronounced soon for acts of terror they carried out in Iraq," Malik Dohan al-Hassan said in an interview on Sunday. He said those on trial included Egyptians, Iranians, Jordanians, Lebanese, Moroccans, Syrians and Yemenites. | No Pakistanis? There has to be some Pakistanis. You're yanking our chain, Malik! |
"The crimes committed in Iraq will be judged according to Iraqi law which reserves the death sentence for those charged with premeditated murder or those who carry out a car bombing to kill the biggest number of people," he said. Despite personally disapproving of the death penalty, the minister said the dire security situation in Iraq—demonstrated by the weekend massacre of 49 new soldiers after they graduated from a training camp—demanded radical measures. "When one person is responsible for the death of 50 others, must we treat them with the regard that he chose not to give to those whose lives he took?" he asked. | An eminently sensible man. |
Capital punishment, which was in force under the ousted regime of president Saddam Hussein, was reinstated by the interim government on August 8 after being abolished by the previous US-led occupation authority. Hassan recognised that on occasion, arrests and detentions in Iraq were not strictly in accordance with the law, but he reasoned that this was due to the instability of the country and was a temporary phenomenon. "According to the law, a suspect must appear before a judge within 24 hours after his detention, who must issue an arrest warrant," he said. "Prisons refuse entrance to anyone who does not have such a warrant." But if the police do a raid in Najaf, for example, and arrest 500 people on the same day, how could they all be brought before a judge, questioned the minister. Such suspects are therefore detained in local police stations, where they are kept in small cells due to a lack of space. "In certain cases, violations of the law can take place," said Hassan. | This will really set the Euros off. Imperfect justice? How could such a thing be allowed to happen? |
The ministry would resolve these situations, however, by the dispatch of special judges into the towns were large-scale arrests have occured. In addition, really big, solid, impenetrable new prisons will be built, one in Nasiriyah, to the south, which will hold 4,000 detainees and another for 3,000 people in Khan Bani Saad, 40 kilometres (25 miles) east of Baghdad. Such measures, however, will take time to formalise as the ministry has not been prepared to deal with the situation, the minister said. At the same time, Hassan noted an improviment in prison conditions, noting that the Red Cross has unhindered access to Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, where US jailers shocked the world by posing for photographs with naked and hooded Iraqi inmates. Hassan, however, condemned the back-seat his ministry had been given in dealing with the scandal, involving several low-ranking soldiers charged in the affair. "All crimes committed in a country must be judged by the penal code of that country, but the United States refuses to apply this rule with its soldiers," he said. "We are examining the possiblity of lodging a complaint against the Americans or the British at courts in the United States or Britain for the crimes they have committed in Iraq," he said. | I think that's the obligatory domestic consumption. |
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