Britain 'will not extradite murder suspect Chalabi'

Telegraph ^ | 09/08/2004

[Tailgunner Joe]

Salem Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi tribunal trying Saddam Hussein, will not be extradited on murder charges while he is in London, the Foreign Office has confirmed.

An arrest warrant for Mr Chalabi, 41, was issued last week over the murder of Haithem Fadhil, director general of the Iraqi finance ministry.

Mr Chalabi, a lawyer and the executive director of the special tribunal trying Saddam, is on a private visit to London and has denied any involvement in the killing.

Zuhair al-Maliky, Iraq's chief investigating judge, claims Mr Chalabi made a threat to kill Mr Fadhil after he accused the Chalabi family of seizing government property.

Mr Chalabi's uncle, Ahmad, a former member of the Iraqi governing council who has fallen out of favour with his American backers, has also been indicted on counterfeiting charges.

A Foreign Office spokesman said Britain does not have an extradition treaty with Iraq and could not help the Baghdad government.

He added that it had received no request from the Iraqi interim administration to arrest Mr Chalabi while he was in London.

Mr Chalabi, who was educated at Yale and Columbia universities, served as a legal adviser to the Iraqi governing council, which was disbanded in June.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the allegations against him are "ridiculous" and denied even meeting Mr Fadhil.

Mr Chalabi said minutes from the Iraqi governing council showed he had been at a meeting on the day he was alleged to have threatened Mr Fadhil.

He said he would fear for his life if he was put in an Iraqi prison, where many of the inmates would be former Ba'athist supporters.

He also claimed the judge who issued the warrant against him had previously criticised him and the tribunal process trying Saddam.

He added that he believed Saddam would face the death penalty, which was reconstituted by the interim Iraqi government at the weekend.

"I'm the director of administration of the tribunal, not a judge so I can't really make these comments," he said.

"But I imagine that if he is convicted of some of the crimes and the charges against him by a judge following a fair trial I imagine they would try to institute [the death penalty]."

[ridesthemiles]

How convenient that he was in London at the right time> Wonder if he got a heads up this was coming?

[Askel5]

Naturally ... any trouble Chalabi or his ilk get into can be neatly blamed on the Clintonistas, I'm sure.

November 2, 1999
U.S. Gives Its Backing, and Cash, to Anti-Hussein Groups
By CHRISTOPHER S. WREN

The Clinton administration made clear Monday that its support for Iraqi dissidents would be channeled through the Iraqi National Congress, a diverse and shaky coalition of Iraqi opposition groups that have so far shown little in common beyond their hostility to President Saddam Hussein.

Thomas R. Pickering, the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, underscored the support in a speech ending a conference held by the Iraqi National Congress in New York, which was paid for by the United States and attended by more than 300 Iraqi dissidents, a few of whom came from inside Iraq.

Pickering's remarks left little doubt that the Iraqi National Congress is the primary beneficiary of the $97 million that the United States Congress authorized in goods and services last year to help the Iraqi opposition.

"We believe that international support for and solidarity with the Iraqi people are urgently needed," Pickering said. "It is high time now to join free Iraqis through the Iraqi National Congress in preparing" for a transition to democratic rule in Baghdad.

Pickering promised that the United States would organize an international effort to rebuild a democratic Iraq once President Hussein was overthrown.

"We know and you know that skepticism abounds about your ability to maintain a unified front, and to act effectively as a political grouping," Pickering said. "It will demand great effort and energy from you and from us to prove those skeptics wrong, and to mobilize strong worldwide support."

The Iraqi National Congress held its last conference in 1992 in Salahudeen in northern Iraq. In 1996, its fighters in the region were decimated by Iraqi forces who came to the aid of one Kurdish faction, the Kurdistan Democratic Party, against its rival, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. Both Kurdish factions attended the latest meeting and are represented in the congress's new leadership.

Covert aid to the congress by the Central Intelligence Agency in the past put off some other dissident groups. The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, an anti-Hussein group that has ties to Iran, declined to send anyone to the New York meeting.

Other critics have said that the congress looks too fractious and disorganized to threaten Hussein's iron-fisted rule. But one Iraqi at the conference said that the United States made clear that it would not help any faction that did not cooperate with other factions.

The involvement of the United States, which in the 1991 Persian Gulf war led a military coalition to evict Hussein's forces from Kuwait, creates a problem for the Iraqi National Congress, said Clovis Maksoud, a former Arab League ambassador to the United Nations who directs the Center for the Global South at American University in Washington. The congress's credibility as the legitimate Iraqi opposition to Hussein, he said, was undermined by the American role in bringing the opposition groups together. "It renders opposition in that context easy to be dismissed as unpatriotic," Professor Maksoud said.

In Baghdad Monday, Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan ridiculed the meeting of the Iraqi National Congress as nothing new. "They were paid more money in the past but they were unable to do anything," Reuters quoted him as saying.

To bridge the ideological and ethnic diversity in its ranks, the Iraqi National Congress yesterday introduced a potentially unwieldy seven-man leadership. It also chose a 65-member council that Salah Shaikhly, a congress spokesman, described as "representative of all the different groups within the Iraqi opposition."

The membership includes former Baath Party officials and former army officers, monarchists, Shiite Islamists, Assyrian Christians, Kurds, members of Iraq's small Turkmen minority and others.

"We have left the door open for all the groups," said Hoshyar Zibari, a co-leader from the Kurdistan Democratic Party.

Another new co-leader, Sharif Ali Bin al-Hussein, who heads the Constitutional Monarchy Movement, said many people expected the conference to collapse, but were proven wrong. "The opposition is a work in progress," he said. "This is one step among many."

Some Iraqi dissidents criticized Washington for so far offering computers, fax machines and office supplies instead of military hardware. The coalition will not get actual cash until it incorporates itself as a legal entity and has a transparent bookkeeping system, a State Department official said.

Ahmed Chalabi, a veteran leader of the congress, said it was not ready yet for weapons. "We do not want to get a bunch of guns and go blazing into the sunshine," he said.

Chalabi acknowledged that the Iraqi opposition felt let down by the United States in 1991 and 1996, when its battles against government forces failed to get American military support.

"We both have learned a lot since 1991," Chalabi said.

It's interesting ... I had no ideas our plans to democratize Iraq were nailed down by Pickering a year prior to his confecting plans for the re-organization of Afghanistan with the former Soviets.

busy guy.

[Askel5]

Note to self: further to "bombing holy cities" ...

Wednesday, December 18, 2002
Richard Lewis / Associated Press


Ahmed Chalabi, left, and Sharif Ali bin Al Hussein are among those mapping out their country's political future if Saddam is ousted.

Iraqi dissidents to share power

Exiles declare they will recognize political clout of Iraq's Shiite Muslims

By Salah Nasrawi / Associated Press

LONDON -- Iraqi exiles agreed Tuesday on a power-sharing plan that for the first time recognizes the political clout of Shiite Muslims who are a majority in a nation long controlled by Sunni Muslims such as Saddam Hussein.

The agreement by Iraq's usually fractious opposition groups resulted from a heated London conference aimed at mapping out Iraq's political future if Saddam is ousted, and finding accord among exiles divided along ethnic, political and religious lines.

Aspirations were high. Delegates settled on the size of a committee that could form the basis of a post-Saddam transitional government, and plan to reconvene Jan. 15 to decide the committee's leadership. Ahmed Chalabi, whose Iraqi National Congress was one of the six main factions at the conference, said that meeting would take place in northern Iraq, their enemy's back yard.

Northern Iraq slipped from the Iraqi president's control after the 1991 Gulf War and now is run -- under the protection of U.S. and British war planes -- by two Kurdish groups that took part in the meeting that ended Tuesday.

Negotiations in London were so tough that delegates retreated into a closed session to hammer out details after holding a closing news conference complete with ringing declarations in support of reconciliation and tolerance. The conference, which had been scheduled to end Sunday after three days, lasted two days longer as delegates fought over the committee's size and composition.

Hours after their news conference, organizers released a list of the committee's 65 members. Shiites, largely denied political power under Saddam and his predecessors, held nearly half the seats at 32.

The list included key leaders such as Chalabi, whose Iraqi National Congress is an umbrella for opposition groups; Iyad Allawi, leader of another umbrella group, the Iraqi National Accord; and Abdelaziz al-Hakim, whose brother Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim heads the Iran-based Shiite group the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

Three women, all Shiites active in independent anti-Saddam groups, received places. Among them was Safiya al-Soheil, whose father, Talib al-Soheil, helped plot a 1993 coup attempt against Saddam before fleeing with his family. He was killed in 1995 in Lebanon, apparently by Saddam's agents. She has campaigned for Saddam to be punished for crimes against the Iraqi people.

Conference delegates earlier agreed on a list of 49 current Iraqi regime officials -- including Saddam and his two sons -- who should face war crimes trials. Other officials would be granted amnesty.

Committee places also went to representatives of ethnic and religious minorities such as Christians, to intellectuals and to former Iraqi army and intelligence officers. The committee will form policies and facilitate communication between Iraqi dissidents and the international community.

A statement issued at the end of the conference suggested a three-man Sovereign Council to lead a transitional government. No candidates for the council were discussed publicly. The council would be modeled on one established after a 1958 Iraqi coup that included an Arab Sunni, a Shiite and a Kurd.

Other proposals in the statement included holding elections within two years and separating legislative, executive and judicial powers. It also declared Islam the state religion and basis of laws. Saddam's Baath party espouses secularism, but elements of Iraqi society are religiously conservative.

.... elements of Iraqi society are religiously conservative

This can be fixed.

[SunkenCiv]

Now, if he were, say, the former dictator of Argentina...

A Man of Straw
by Christopher Hitchens
February 7, 2000

In principle, I rather detest articles or items that begin or end with the words, "You heard it here first." Nonetheless, this is what I told the readers of this column on December 28, 1998, in rounding off a whole series of uncannily, nay eerily, exact predictions about the Pinochet case: "I also know Jack Straw, and I think he'll contrive a 'humane' way to let Pinochet go home. Everything Straw does is modeled on Clinton, from 'zero tolerance' for dope to school uniforms and curfews for teenagers. People who preach 'law 'n' order' for the weak are invariably soft on crime when it comes to the strong."