Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Iraqi women languish in jail without trial
(Azzaman) - A visit to a women prison in a Baghdad neighborhood has revealed that Iraqi authorities are paying lip service to human rights and rule of law. The visit by Vice-President Tareq al-Hashemi found the jail over crowded with many women afflicted with contagious diseases due to lack of medicine and medical care.
“The tour has exposed a difficult and tragic situation in the whole process, starting with detention and ending with the horrific conditions of the prison,” a statement by Hashemi’s office said. The prison is in the neighborhood of Kadhimiya and is believed to hold mainly Sunni Muslim women. Many of the prisoners, the statement said, were detained because their husbands or sons were suspected of having links to forces resisting U.S. occupation.
“This means if anything that the women are taken hostages to exert pressure on their husbands who are wanted by the authorities,” the statement said. There were teenage women among the prisoners some of whom had spent several years behind bars, the statement added.
One women prisoner, Suaad Aziz, had told Hashemi that she was arrested while looking for her son who had disappeared for more than one year. “I was a principal of a school in the Amiriya district of Baghdad. They have sentenced me to death and no one has ever asked me a single question why I was here,” the statement reported Aziz as saying.
Thousands of Iraqis languish in scores of prisons in Iraq. U.S. troops have their own jails which they have constructed specifically to detain suspects. Iraqi authorities run their own prisons. There are more than 30,000 Iraqis in jails run by the U.S. and Iraqi government and most of them have been incarcerated merely on suspicion and held without trial.
“The tour has exposed a difficult and tragic situation in the whole process, starting with detention and ending with the horrific conditions of the prison,” a statement by Hashemi’s office said. The prison is in the neighborhood of Kadhimiya and is believed to hold mainly Sunni Muslim women. Many of the prisoners, the statement said, were detained because their husbands or sons were suspected of having links to forces resisting U.S. occupation.
“This means if anything that the women are taken hostages to exert pressure on their husbands who are wanted by the authorities,” the statement said. There were teenage women among the prisoners some of whom had spent several years behind bars, the statement added.
One women prisoner, Suaad Aziz, had told Hashemi that she was arrested while looking for her son who had disappeared for more than one year. “I was a principal of a school in the Amiriya district of Baghdad. They have sentenced me to death and no one has ever asked me a single question why I was here,” the statement reported Aziz as saying.
Thousands of Iraqis languish in scores of prisons in Iraq. U.S. troops have their own jails which they have constructed specifically to detain suspects. Iraqi authorities run their own prisons. There are more than 30,000 Iraqis in jails run by the U.S. and Iraqi government and most of them have been incarcerated merely on suspicion and held without trial.
Labels: Kadhimiya, prisons, Tareq al-Hashemi, women
Monday, August 06, 2007
Attempted assassination on one of al Sadr's top aides
Security, Politics
(McClatchy Newspapers) - On Sunday, men wearing Iraqi military uniforms tried to gun down one of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr's top aides, raising questions about whether the powerful Mahdi Army controlled by Sadr may be turning on its own, using tactics typically linked to the Mahdi Army itself.
Sadr officials said that Sadr's top aide, Hazem al Araji, was in a convoy in the northwest Baghdad neighborhood of Kadhimiyah when armed men wearing Iraqi National Guard uniforms opened fire on him, injuring five of his bodyguards.
Sadr, an influential cleric, leads the Mahdi Army, which has infiltrated Iraqi security forces and is often accused of posing in Iraqi military uniforms to carry out its attacks. It is unclear whether the would-be assassins were actual Iraqi soldiers or possibly other backers of Sadr, whose movement has become splintered in recent months. A spokesperson for the Iraqi military could not be reached for comment Sunday.
Recently, al Araji was reported to have lost clout in the Sadr movement and some of his control over the Mahdi Army in Kadhimiyah.
Qahtan al Sudani, a spokesman for Araji who leads the Sadr office in Kadhimiyah, blamed the attack on Sunnis.
"We accuse the Baathist takfiris," al Sudani said referring to both Saddam Hussein's secular party and Sunni extremists.
Araji was a devotee of Sadr's late father, a prominent Iraqi ayatollah. Araji fled Iraq in 1999 after Sadr's father was killed and returned from exile in Canada in 2003. U.S. forces twice detained Araji after the Mahdi Army fought two bitter uprisings against the Americans in 2004, but released on both occasions.
Sadr officials said that Sadr's top aide, Hazem al Araji, was in a convoy in the northwest Baghdad neighborhood of Kadhimiyah when armed men wearing Iraqi National Guard uniforms opened fire on him, injuring five of his bodyguards.
Sadr, an influential cleric, leads the Mahdi Army, which has infiltrated Iraqi security forces and is often accused of posing in Iraqi military uniforms to carry out its attacks. It is unclear whether the would-be assassins were actual Iraqi soldiers or possibly other backers of Sadr, whose movement has become splintered in recent months. A spokesperson for the Iraqi military could not be reached for comment Sunday.
Recently, al Araji was reported to have lost clout in the Sadr movement and some of his control over the Mahdi Army in Kadhimiyah.
Qahtan al Sudani, a spokesman for Araji who leads the Sadr office in Kadhimiyah, blamed the attack on Sunnis.
"We accuse the Baathist takfiris," al Sudani said referring to both Saddam Hussein's secular party and Sunni extremists.
Araji was a devotee of Sadr's late father, a prominent Iraqi ayatollah. Araji fled Iraq in 1999 after Sadr's father was killed and returned from exile in Canada in 2003. U.S. forces twice detained Araji after the Mahdi Army fought two bitter uprisings against the Americans in 2004, but released on both occasions.
Labels: assassination attempt, Hazem al Araji, Iraqi Army, Kadhimiya, Mahdi Army, Moqtada Al-Sadr, Qahtan al Sudani
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Twin bombs kill seven in Baghdad
Security
(Reuters) - At least seven people were killed and 25 wounded when bombs in two parked cars exploded in quick succession in a Shi'ite district in northeastern Baghdad on Wednesday, police said. The cars were parked by the roadside near a central square in Kadhimiya. The bombs went off about two minutes apart, police said.
The first exploded close to al-Zahra square, a commercial area in central Kadhimiya. The second bomb exploded near a parking lot, commonly used by shoppers, close to a women's jail.
Thousands of extra U.S. and Iraqi troops have been deployed in Baghdad and other areas as part of a security crackdown aimed at averting all-out sectarian civil war between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs dominant under Saddam Hussein. U.S. military officials have said those forces now control about a third of Baghdad's neighborhoods. The crackdown began in mid-February. The number of targeted sectarian killings fell during the early stages of the crackdown but has begun to rise again, military officials say. Large-scale bombings, many blamed on Sunni Islamist al Qaeda, remain common.
The first exploded close to al-Zahra square, a commercial area in central Kadhimiya. The second bomb exploded near a parking lot, commonly used by shoppers, close to a women's jail.
Thousands of extra U.S. and Iraqi troops have been deployed in Baghdad and other areas as part of a security crackdown aimed at averting all-out sectarian civil war between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs dominant under Saddam Hussein. U.S. military officials have said those forces now control about a third of Baghdad's neighborhoods. The crackdown began in mid-February. The number of targeted sectarian killings fell during the early stages of the crackdown but has begun to rise again, military officials say. Large-scale bombings, many blamed on Sunni Islamist al Qaeda, remain common.
Labels: al-Zahra square, car bombs, Kadhimiya
Monday, May 14, 2007
Adhamiyah residents vow to destroy security walls
Security
(Azzaman) - The residents of Adhamiya have vowed to destroy the walls U.S. troops are constructing to separate Baghdad neighborhoods on sectarian grounds. “We shall destroy the walls the notorious occupation is constructing and keep our city an integral part of Iraq,” a statement by a newly formed resistance group said.The statement emailed to the newspaper, said the wall separating Adhamiya from the rest of Baghdad “must be brought down” and this will be “achieved through the power and muscles of all the residents of Baghdad.” The group, the Adhamiya National Youth, said U.S. troops have divided their neighborhood into two parts with aim of weakening its resistance.
“Those who constructed the wall realize that the attacks targeting Adhamiya from all sides are being carried out by the death squads which the occupation and Israeli intelligence have set up,” the statement said. In another development, the inhabitants of Kadhimiya, a Shiite-dominated neighborhood have joined forces with the Sunni majority Adhamiya to have the pulled down.
The two neighborhoods are working to demonstrate that the two sects can tolerate each other and live peacefully together. The neighborhoods and their elders are lobbying the parliament which recently passed a resolution demanding the destruction of the wall. They are also mobilizing the inhabitants to stand firmly against U.S. plans to encircle Baghdad neighborhoods with concrete walls, urging the young to dismantle the existing ones.
Labels: Adhamiya National Youth, Adhamiyah, Kadhimiya, wall
Monday, April 30, 2007
U.S. forces clash with Mahdi Army in Baghdad
Security
(New York Times) - Militiamen loyal to the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr clashed with American forces in northern Baghdad on Sunday, an Interior Ministry official said, the latest in a series of indications that the militia might be emerging from two months of self-imposed dormancy.
On the orders of Mr. Sadr, the militia, known as the Mahdi Army, has remained largely underground since the intensified security plan for Baghdad took effect in mid-February. But a steady increase in the number of corpses recovered from the streets in recent weeks, and sporadic clashes between Mahdi fighters and government forces, have suggested a possible resurgence of the militia.
Its return could significantly complicate the American-led effort to tame violence in the capital because it would split the attention of American and Iraqi forces, already struggling to subdue the Sunni Arab insurgency and interrupt its campaign of vehicle bombings against Shiite targets. The circumstances of the latest fighting remained unclear late Sunday.
The Interior Ministry official said American soldiers and Mahdi militiamen exchanged heavy gunfire near a prominent Shiite shrine in the Shiite neighborhood of Kadhimiya, and that two American Humvees had burst into flames. The ministry official offered no explanation for the clashes.
Sheik Khalid al-Kadhumy, an official in Mr. Sadr’s organization, said that American forces surrounded the Sadr offices in the Kadhimiya neighborhood in the evening. Something prompted the Americans to open fire on the office and surrounding buildings, he said, resulting in casualties among local residents, though he did not know how many.
Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, an American military spokesman in Baghdad, said that he had no comment on reports of the fighting but that the military was working on a statement about the clashes. Some members of the Shiite community have been agitating for a return of the Mahdi Army in recent weeks, as spectacular car bombings against Shiite communities in Baghdad killed hundreds of people. The militia is regarded by many Shiites as a bulwark against militant Sunni Arabs.
Three weeks ago, American forces fought Mahdi cells in the southern city of Diwaniya. And late last month, Mahdi fighters battled Iraqi Army soldiers in southwestern Baghdad. But military officials hoped those were localized clashes.
On the orders of Mr. Sadr, the militia, known as the Mahdi Army, has remained largely underground since the intensified security plan for Baghdad took effect in mid-February. But a steady increase in the number of corpses recovered from the streets in recent weeks, and sporadic clashes between Mahdi fighters and government forces, have suggested a possible resurgence of the militia.
Its return could significantly complicate the American-led effort to tame violence in the capital because it would split the attention of American and Iraqi forces, already struggling to subdue the Sunni Arab insurgency and interrupt its campaign of vehicle bombings against Shiite targets. The circumstances of the latest fighting remained unclear late Sunday.
The Interior Ministry official said American soldiers and Mahdi militiamen exchanged heavy gunfire near a prominent Shiite shrine in the Shiite neighborhood of Kadhimiya, and that two American Humvees had burst into flames. The ministry official offered no explanation for the clashes.
Sheik Khalid al-Kadhumy, an official in Mr. Sadr’s organization, said that American forces surrounded the Sadr offices in the Kadhimiya neighborhood in the evening. Something prompted the Americans to open fire on the office and surrounding buildings, he said, resulting in casualties among local residents, though he did not know how many.
Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, an American military spokesman in Baghdad, said that he had no comment on reports of the fighting but that the military was working on a statement about the clashes. Some members of the Shiite community have been agitating for a return of the Mahdi Army in recent weeks, as spectacular car bombings against Shiite communities in Baghdad killed hundreds of people. The militia is regarded by many Shiites as a bulwark against militant Sunni Arabs.
Three weeks ago, American forces fought Mahdi cells in the southern city of Diwaniya. And late last month, Mahdi fighters battled Iraqi Army soldiers in southwestern Baghdad. But military officials hoped those were localized clashes.
Labels: Baghdad, Kadhimiya, Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, Mahdi Army, Ministry of Interior, Moqtada Al-Sadr, Sheik Khalid al-Kadhumy, U.S. forces
