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IRAQI SHEPHERD TAKES RUMSFELD, FRANKS TO COURT OVER FAMILY DEATHS

Iraqi shepherd takes Rumsfeld, Franks to court over family deaths

RAMADI, Iraq, July 20 (AFP) - An Iraqi shepherd launched a court case Sunday against top US military leaders after a US plane shelled his desert camp during the war to oust Saddam Hussein, killing 17 family members and 200 sheep.

Abud Sarhan, 71, issued lawsuits against US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Tommy Franks, the retired general who led US and British forces into Iraq, over the fatal April 4 bombing.

The shepherd expressed hope that "the law runs its course and that the pilot who bombed the tent is (also) brought to justice and punished," adding that he expected compensation for his damages.

"I would have liked to die with them," said the tearful shepherd, surrounded by a large number of friends dressed in traditional head-to-toe dishdashas.

Sarhan told the court he had left his house in Al-Altach, a village in the Ramadi district, 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of Baghdad, and relocated to a desert camp on the advice of pamphlets dropped by US planes recommending them to leave the area, the site of heavy bombing because of a nearby military camp.

Judge Sami Kamel Idan set the next hearing for August 10 "to allow the coalition coordinator to inform representatives of those accused so they could be present".

"We hope the Americans will be present next time. The law is above everyone and they stress that their country defends and respects human rights and that their war was clean," defence lawyer Aref Mukhaiber al-Dulaimi said.

"The Iraqis paid dearly for this war during which the United States used excessive force against the Iraqi people. And those who are responsible for that will have to take responsibility for their actions," he said.

Rabah Mahdi al-Aluani, a second defence lawyer, expressed his surprise at the absence of representatives of Rumsfeld and Franks, saying that if it was repeated, it would "put them in an embarassing position in front of the Iraqi people."

 

BILLIONAIRE'S ADS CHALLENGE US CASE FOR IRAQ WAR

Billionaire's ads challenge US case for Iraq war

NEW YORK, July 25 (Reuters) - Billionaire philanthropist George Soros is running full-page ads in major U.S. newspapers on Sunday challenging the honesty of the Bush administration's case for waging war in Iraq. The ads in The New York Times, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and the Houston Chronicle, are titled, "When the nation goes to war, the people deserve the truth."

A dozen statements made by President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld making the case for war are reprinted and described as either exaggerated or false. The statements center on claims about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction and large quantities of poison gasses.

The Hungarian-born Soros, 72, emigrated to the United States from Britain in 1956 and built a fortune as a financier. He is founder of a network of philanthropic organizations active in more than 50 countries that focus on education, public health, human rights and economic reform. The ads, estimated to cost about $185,000, were co-sponsored by U.S. philanthropists Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman.

"Both George Soros and Lewis Cullman have been deeply concerned about the deception used to justify the war in Iraq," said Michael Vachon, a spokesman for Soros. "They believe their fellow citizens should also be concerned and took out these ads to move them to action."

Bush has defended the case for war, saying he is confident that weapons of mass destruction will eventually be found in Iraq and that criticism of intelligence about Iraq's military capabilities amounts to quibbling.

Public opinion on the issue is closely divided, according to a Quinnipiac University Poll released this week. It showed U.S. voters believed the administration did not intentionally exaggerate evidence that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons by 50 to 44 percent with a 3 percent margin of error.

 

IRAQI POLICE CLOSE NEWSPAPER FOR ANTI-US ARTICLE

Iraqi police close newspaper for anti-US article

BAGHDAD, July 22 (Reuters) - U.S.-backed Iraqi police have shut a Baghdad newspaper and detained its office manager because of an article inciting action against the United States, the U.S.-led administration said on Tuesday.

The closure was made because of Al Mustaqila's story on July 13 entitled: "Death to All Spies and Those who Cooperate with the U.S.; Killing Them is Religious Duty," a statement by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) said.

The move came as a press watchdog called on U.S. and British authorities to ease media restrictions and draw up liberal media laws to replace the straitjacket imposed by ousted leader Saddam Hussein.

Paris-based Reporters Without Borders criticised rules imposed last month by the U.S.-led authority in Iraq that make it illegal to incite violence.

More than 20 newspapers are operating in post-war Iraq, running stories and editorials that would have been unthinkable under Saddam's iron-fisted rule.

The CPA said it supports the development of a free and responsible press. But it said Al Mustaqila "has chosen to threaten the basic human rights of Iraqi citizens, especially the right to life and the right to live without fear or threat."

"The CPA and the Iraqi Police Service therefore judged that al Mustaqila poses a significant security threat to Iraqi citizens," the CPA said.

 

US SHUTTERS NEWSPAPER IN BAGHDAD

U.S. Shutters Newspaper In Baghdad
'Inciteful' Article Brings Raid And Detention of Editor
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
July 23, 2003

BAGHDAD -- A local newspaper has been shut down and its manager arrested because of an article that U.S. occupation authorities and Iraqi officials considered an incitement to violence and a threat to human rights in Iraq.

Iraqi police accompanied by U.S. troops raided the offices of Al-Mustaqila newspaper, which means The Independent in Arabic. Neighbors said troops broke down the front door, ransacked the office and detained the newspaper's manager, Abdul Sattar Shalan.

According to U.S. occupation authorities, the paper published an article 10 days ago titled, "Death to all spies and those who cooperate with the U.S.; killing them is religious duty." The headline closely echoed recent threats made by clandestine armed groups against U.S. forces and their Iraqi collaborators.

"The Coalitional Provisional Authority supports and encourages the development of a free and responsible Iraqi press," the occupation agency said in a statement today. But it said Al-Mustaqila "has chosen to threaten the basic human rights of Iraqi citizens" and published a "clearly inciteful article," putting it in violation of occupation press rules.

The U.S. authority has banned all Iraqi media from publishing or airing material it views as inciting political, religious or ethnic violence or promoting attacks on U.S. forces here. It has already shut down one Baghdad radio station and one Shiite Muslim newspaper in Najaf on these grounds.

In a report today, the Paris-based advocacy group Reporters Without Borders criticized the occupation press rules, saying U.S. authorities should ease their restrictions on the Iraqi media and develop more "liberal and democratic" regulations.

The Iraqi Governing Council, appointed earlier this month by U.S. officials, issued a statement today supporting the shutdown of Al-Mustaqila. It said the article in question was "inconsistent with all laws, religious principles and human rights," and that the right to press dissent should not extend to "calling for the shedding of others' blood."

Today, the two-story yellow building that housed Al-Mustaqila was locked and empty, and no copies of the newspaper could be found at any newsstand in downtown Baghdad. But several neighbors described Monday's armed raid in detail and said they were surprised because nothing about the newspaper or its staff had appeared out of the ordinary.

"Everything seemed normal. There was nothing suspicious. They reported on what was happening, including the attacks [on U.S. troops] in Fallujah," said Abdul Mohsin, 40, who manages a printing plant across the street. He said the police and U.S. troops turned the newspaper's office upside down and took some equipment.

Occupation authorities could not be reached for comment tonight. It was not immediately clear whether the article in question had been a news story or an editorial, and there was no information on the whereabouts of Al-Mustaqila's manager or whether any charges would be filed against him.

Several Iraqi newspaper journalists said they knew little about Al-Mustaqila but that they did not feel the U.S. authorities were interfering unduly in their own reporting. More than 50 newspapers and magazines have opened in the capital since the government of president Saddam Hussein was deposed.

"Every day the Americans send a representative with their news, and we are free to publish it or not," said Nadah Shauqat, an editor at Az-Zaman, the best-known Baghdad daily. "We are independent. We publish news and interviews about political groups, but we do not publish propaganda."

 

'US APPLIED DOUBLE STANDARDS'

'US applied double standards'
July 28, 2003

Cairo - An Egyptian government newspaper on Sunday accused Washington of double standards by releasing photographs of Saddam Hussein's dead sons after denouncing the Iraqis for showing pictures of dead US soldiers.

"The United States and the Western media moved heaven and earth when Iraqi television broadcast (images) of the dead bodies and of US prisoners, in the first days of the US-British aggression against Iraq," Al-Ahram daily said.

The newspaper said such actions were a "violation of the Geneva Convention, but the United States did the same thing, but in a worse way, by publishing the photographs of the corpses of Uday and Qusay", the daily said.

"The official American and Western position on the publication of the photos of the American dead (in Iraq), then the publication of the photos of the bodies of Uday and and Qusay is an example of double standards," it said.

The United States had denounced the broadcast of images of dead Americans and captured soldiers on Iraqi and Arab television during the first few days of the war in Iraq in March.

On Friday, the White House defended its decision to release pictures showing the corpses of Saddam Hussein's two sons, rejecting comparisons with Iraq's wartime photos of slain US soldiers and prisoners of war.

"I think there is a big difference. It is consistent with the Geneva Convention," spokesman Scott McClellan said.

US officials have said that they released the gory pictures, which claim to show the corpses of Hussein's sons Uday and Qusay, to prove to the Iraqi people that the two men really were killed in a firefight in northern Iraq.

 

IRAQ-AL-JAZEERA

Iraq-Al-Jazeera
July 28, 2003

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) -- Two of the most high-profile Arab TV networks reacted angrily Sunday to U.S. claims of biased news coverage about the Iraq war.

Adnan al-Sharif, the manager of Al-Jazeera, said poor translation of their reports was behind the accusations.

"Our news is being poorly translated for the Americans," al-Sharif said.

Earlier, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz accused Al-Jazeera, based in Qatar, and Dubai-based Al-Arabiya of bias in their reporting.

Wolfowitz told Fox News that the networks incite violence against American forces with slanted reports that he asserted are funded by Middle East governments.

"These governments should stop and realize that this is not a game, that they're endangering the lives of American troops," he said.

Al-Arabiya's Editor in Chief Salah Negm said the network is private. "Al-Arabiya's coverage reflects the truth even if that angered some people," he said.

Al-Jazeera was launched with a Qatari government subsidy, but al-Sharif said the station is now "an independent institution."

 

SADDAM'S DAUGHTERS

Saddam's Daughters
August 1, 2003

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) -- Two of Saddam Hussein's daughters and their nine children received sanctuary Thursday in Jordan on humanitarian grounds, granted by King Abdullah II.

Raghad Saddam Hussein and Rana Saddam Hussein -- who had reportedly been living in humble circumstances in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, since their father's ouster -- arrived in the capital Amman Thursday, Information Minister Nabil al-Sharif told The Associated Press. He refused to say if they traveled through a third country.

U.S. officials say they are closing in on Saddam, but it was not clear if his daughters' departure from Iraq indicated the hunt for their father was nearing an end. Word of the arrival in Jordan of two of Saddam's five children came after his elder sons, Odai and Qusai, were killed in a July 22 firefight with U.S. troops.

Some U.S. military officers in Iraq said the daughters' flight to Jordan was another sign that intensified sweeps are squeezing Saddam and other members of the defeated regime.

"It's good news. Even if it's estranged or extended family, it shows they're on the move," said Army Lt. Col. Steve Russell, who commands soldiers patrolling Saddam's hometown of Tikrit.

It was not clear whether the Americans had sought the daughters for questioning about their father.

The two daughters had lived private lives and -- unlike their brothers -- were not believed to be wanted for crimes linked to their father's brutal regime. Instead, the women were seen by some as victims of Saddam, who ordered their husbands killed in 1996.

Al-Sharif said Saddam's daughters were allowed to come to the kingdom because they had "run out of all options."

The daughters had been estranged from their father for a time but were believed to have reconciled with Saddam in recent years.

A brother of their late husbands, Jamal Kamel, told The Associated Press that the women "don't know anything about where their father could be. They're not interested in politics."

He said the women were in one of Jordan's palaces under the king's protection but refused to elaborate.

The whereabouts of Saddam's wife Sajida Khairallah Telfah and his fifth and youngest child, daughter Hala, are unknown.

Hala Saddam Hussein's husband, Gen. Kamal Mustafa Abdallah Sultan al-Tikriti, was No. 10 on the list of 55 most-wanted former officials of the regime. He surrendered to U.S. forces on May 17, the U.S. Central Command said.

Saddam had a very public affair with Samira Shahbandar, daughter of a prominent Iraqi family, who has been described as his second wife. The two are rumored to have had a son.

Last month, a cousin of Saddam, Izzi-Din Mohammed Hassan al-Majid, had said he would try to help Raghad and Rana apply for asylum in Britain, where he lives. That prompted a statement from Prime Minister Tony Blair that Britain would not consider asylum applications from members of Saddam's family who may have committed human rights abuses.

Long accustomed to extravagance, the women had been living with their nine children in a modest Baghdad home without electricity since their father's ouster, the pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat reported June 1.

Their husbands -- brothers Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel and Saddam Kamel, who were also Saddam's cousins -- defected to Jordan in 1995 and announced plans to work to overthrow Saddam. The two were lured back to Iraq in February 1996 and killed.

In the 1999 book "Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein," authors Andrew and Patrick Cockburn wrote that the sisters were "once Saddam's favorite children, (but they) never forgave him for the killings" of their husbands.

"They assumed he had orchestrated the attack .... They continued to live with their ... children in a family house in Tikrit, never going out, always wearing black, and refusing to see any member of their family apart from their mother," the Cockburns wrote.

But in July, London's Sunday Times quoted Raghad as saying that Saddam "is my father and I am his daughter. He was a very good father."

 

'SADDAM' URGES IRAQIS TO FIGHT ON

'Saddam' urges Iraqis to fight on
BBC
August 1, 2003

The tape is the latest in a series supposedly from Saddam Hussein

A new audio tape purported to be of Saddam Hussein has been aired by the Arabic al-Jazeera satellite channel.
In the recording, the speaker urges Iraqis to fight US forces in Iraq and evict them from the country.

The voice calls on Iraqis to keep their nerve and says the military balance has shifted against the Americans since the end of the war.

Reports from Iraq, meanwhile, say a US convoy has come under attack in the town of Falluja, 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Baghdad. Witnesses said at least one attacker was killed in a gun battle, which lasted 90 minutes.

'Glorious resistance'

In the latest tape, the speaker accuses some Iraqis of losing "their sense of balance during the war... and afterwards".

He says "only the actions of the faithful who struggled and fought can evict the invaders".

In the message, the speaker urges Iraqis to retain state property to use in the "glorious resistance".

He expressed confidence that "one day the occupation army will falter and that victory is possible at any moment".

The speaker said the tape was made on Sunday.

The broadcast comes three days after the last message attributed to Saddam Hussein, which acknowledged the deaths of his sons in a fight with US forces.

The CIA said that recording was almost certainly authentic.

US forces have recently intensified the search for Saddam Hussein, who has not been positively sighted since March.