Iraq Occupation Focus Newsletter No 129
Iraq Occupation Focus
www.iraqoccupationfocus.org.uk
Newsletter No. 129
September 12th, 2009
Iraq’s Mosul under tight curfew
Azzaman reports (August 31st): Major parts of the Province of Nineveh of which the city of Mosul is the capital are under tight curfew for fear of rebel attacks.
The authorities have intensified security measures, setting up road blocks and checkpoints at the main entries to Mosul and placing villages and towns under curfew.
Ex-US soldier gets life in prison for rape, murder of Iraqi girl
AFP reports (September 5th): A former US soldier will spend his life in prison for the gang rape and murder of an Iraqi girl and the slaughter of her family, a judge ruled.
Steven Dale Green was convicted in May of the 2006 rape and killing of 14-year-old Abeer al-Janabi and the murder of her mother, father and six-year-old sister in their home south of Baghdad. He was considered the ringleader of a group of five soldiers who plotted the crime over whiskey and a game of cards at a traffic check point in Mahmudiyah.
Three other soldiers were given life sentences for the attack by military courts but will be eligible for parole in 10 years.
Iraqi Journalist Detained for a Year Without Charge by US Forces Despite Iraqi Court Order
Democracy Now! Reports (September 2nd): A year ago, US and Iraqi forces raided the home of Iraqi journalist Ibrahim Jassam, a freelance photographer working for Reuters. Soldiers seized his computer hard drive and cameras. He was led away, handcuffed and blindfolded. For the past year the US military has held Jassam without charge. Ten months ago, the Iraqi Central Criminal Court ordered his release for lack of evidence, but the US military refused to release him, claiming he was a “high security threat.”
The Truth Of Iraq's City Of Deformed Babies
Sky News reports (September 1st): An Iraqi doctor has told Sky News the number of babies born with deformities in the heavily-bombed area of Fallujah is still on the increase.
Fifteen months ago a Sky News investigation revealed growing numbers of children being born with defects in Fallujah. Concerns were that the rise in deformities may have been linked to the use of chemical weapons by US forces.
There are a wide range of problems - from abnormalities of the abdomen to facial disfigurements. We have also seen pictures of all kinds of deformed foetuses which have not survived.
All of our evidence is anecdotal, but repeatedly people tell us they believe the deformities must be linked to the heavy bombardment of Fallujah - a Sunni insurgent stronghold - by America in 2004. People want an independent investigation into the impact of the kinds of weapons used - including controversial white phosphorus. Yet even since we first started to give a voice to the calls for help from the people of Fallujah things seem to have got worse.
Dr Ahmed Uraibi, a specialist paediatrician in Fallujah, told us that the number of deformities he has dealt with has increased in the last year.
Protecting journalists in Iraq
Agnes Callamard writes for The Guardian (August 28th): Iraq remains the most dangerous country in the world to be a journalist and nearly 200 journalists and other media workers have been killed there since the US-led invasion in 2003. In this context, there should have been widespread jubilation last month, when the Iraqi government published its draft law to protect journalists.
Instead, hundreds of journalists, academics and activists staged a protest in Baghdad last week, voicing concern that the new law will stifle free expression and pave the way for increased government interference in their work. Article 19, which campaigns globally for freedom of expression, is concerned that this law fails significantly to meet international standards on human rights, including freedom of expression.
Could a police state return?
The Economist reports (September 3rd): THE main book market, in Baghdad’s Mutanabi Street, was a hive of angry chatter. Bespectacled traders, complaining about new censorship laws, shouted, “This is not freedom of expression,” and talked of holding a demonstration like one last month, when journalists protested against new restrictions.
But would the booksellers dare? They said they were already worried that plainclothes policemen had been taking their names. Perhaps they should go instead to court and fight censorship with the help of lawyers. “Not a chance,” said one book-dealer. “This is the new Iraq.” Legal protections, he noted, count for little. “Power”, he added, “is held by the men with the guns.”
He had a point. The Shia-led government has overseen a ballooning of the country’s security apparatus. Human-rights violations are becoming more common. In private many Iraqis, especially educated ones, are asking if their country may go back to being a police state.
Old habits from Saddam Hussein’s era are becoming familiar again. Torture is routine in government detention centres. “Things are bad and getting worse, even by regional standards,” says Samer Muscati, who works for Human Rights Watch, a New York-based lobby.
Report criticizes Iraq's executions
CNN reports (August 31st): At least 1,000 prisoners are on death row in Iraq, which now has one of the highest rates of execution in the world, the human rights group Amnesty International says in a report.
The courts that sentence people to death do not meet international standards, the report charged, and Iraqi authorities "provide very little information on executions, and some have been carried out secretly." It criticizes the Central Criminal Court of Iraq and the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal, which issue the majority of death sentences in the country.
"Defendants commonly complain that 'confessions' were extracted from them under torture," the report alleges. "Defendants also complain that they are not able to choose their own defense lawyers" when they appear before the Central Criminal Court of Iraq.
China Oil Deal Is New Source of Strife Among Iraqis
NY Times reports (September 5th): The China National Petroleum Corporation has struck oil at the Ahdab field in Wasit Province, southeast of Baghdad. And while the relationship between the company and the Iraqi government has gone smoothly, the presence of a foreign company with vast resources drilling for oil in this poor, rural corner of Iraq has awakened a wave of discontent here.
“We get nothing directly from the Chinese company, and we are suffering,” said Mahmoud Abdul Ridha, head of the Wasit provincial council, whose budget has been cut in half by Baghdad in the past year because of lower international oil prices. “There is an unemployment crisis. We need roads, schools, water treatment plants. We need everything.”
The result has been a local-rights movement — extraordinary in a country where political dissent has historically carried the risk of death — that in the past few months has begun demanding that at least $1 of each barrel of oil produced at the Ahdab field be used to improve access to clean water, health services, schools, paved roads and other needs in the province, which is among Iraq’s poorest.
Protest over power shortages in southern Iraqi city
Azzaman adds (September 3rd): Crowds of Iraqis demonstrated to express their indignation at power and fuelshortages in the southern city of al-Kut [the capital of Wasit Province]. In the heat of the summer, the province used to have two hours of electricity a day.
Steroids, drink and paranoia: the murky world of the private security contractor
The Independent reports (September 1st): Paranoid, competitive and fuelled by guns, alcohol and steroids. That is how one senior contractor in Baghdad describes the private security industry operating in the city's Green Zone. It was the world to which Danny Fitzsimons, a 29-year-old former soldier suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and paranoia, and with an extensive criminal past, returned three weeks ago.
Despite rules against alcohol, his ArmorGroup colleagues welcomed him with a drinking session. A fight broke out and he shot and killed two of them – a Briton, Paul McGuigan, and an Australian, Darren Hoare – then wounded an Iraqi, Arkhan Mahdi. He faces a premeditated murder charge and execution if found guilty.
MPs demand tighter controls on security companies in IraqThe Independent on Sunday reports (September 2nd): A Foreign Office inquiry exonerated a British security company's vetting and weapons-safety procedures just before one of its private soldiers with a criminal record and history of mental illness shot dead two colleagues during a drunken row in Baghdad last month.
MPs yesterday criticised the way the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) handled the inquiry into ArmorGroup and called for proper regulation of the private security industry. Armor has earned £68m since 2007 from government contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan – more than any other British security company.
