A top election official said yesterday that Iraqi law will allow former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and thousands of other Iraqi detainees who have not been brought to trial to vote in this weekend's crucial constitutional referendum.
However, Abdul Hussein Hindawi, the head of the Independent Electoral Commission in Iraq, said it was still awaiting a full list from the Interior Ministry and the US-led coalition of the detainees who should be allowed to receive ballots and vote on Saturday at Abu Ghraib prison and several other US detention centers.
"All non-convicted detainees have the right to vote. That includes Saddam and other former government officials. They will vote," Hindawi said in a telephone interview. Saddam's long-awaited trial is scheduled to begin Oct. 19 on charges that he and seven of his regime's henchmen ordered the 1982 massacre of 143 people in a mainly Shiite town north of Baghdad following a failed attack on Saddam's life.
More than 12,000 detainees are being held at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, Camp Bucca and two other US military camps in Iraq, many awaiting trial or, in some cases, formal charges. Many of the detainees are believed to be Sunni Arabs who were rounded up by US and Iraqi forces on suspicion of supporting Sunni-led insurgent groups.
Across Iraq, militants are currently demanding that Iraqis boycott the referendum and have killed at least 340 people in the last 16 days in a series of attacks, including suicide car bombs, roadside bombs and drive-by shootings.
That included a US soldier and six Iraqis who were killed in Baghdad on Monday by a suicide bomber who detonated a car full of mortars near an entrance to the fortified Green Zone, where Iraq's parliament and the US embassy are located.
The American death brought to 1,956 the number of US service members who have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an AP count.
Yesterday, a car bomb exploded in a crowded market in a town in northwest Iraq, killing 30 Iraqis and wounding 35, police said.
The blast occurred at about 11am in Tal Afar, 420km northwest of Baghdad, when the bomb was detonated by remote control as many people shopped in the market, said Brigadier Najim Abdullah, the town's police chief.
He said no Iraqi security forces or US soldiers were in the area at the time.
Tal Afar is 150km east of the Syrian border.
In the capital, gunmen opened fire on Monday on a convoy carrying delegates from the Arab League in Baghdad during its first visit to Iraq since the fall of Saddam.
The League has met resistance from Shiite and Kurdish leaders as it tries to piece together a reconciliation conference with Sunnis. A policeman was wounded in the shooting, but no one in the delegation was hurt.
The violence comes four days ahead of Iraq's key vote on the new constitution, which Kurds and the majority Shiites largely support and the Sunni Arab minority rejects. Sunnis are campaigning to defeat the charter at the polls, though officials from all sides have been trying up to the last minute to decide on changes to the constitution to swing Sunni support.
Many Sunnis fear the document would create nearly autonomous Kurdish and Shiite mini-states in the north and south, where Iraq's oil wealth is located, and leave most Sunnis isolated in central and western Iraq under a weak central government in Baghdad.
Whether the constitution passes or fails, Iraq is due to hold elections for a new parliament on Dec. 15.
In another development, Iraq has issued arrest warrants against the defense minister and 27 other officials from former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's US-backed government over the alleged disappearance or misappropriation of US$1 billion in military procurement funds, officials said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing