Aid workers kidnapped in Iraq
Four aid workers, including two Canadians, have been kidnapped in Iraq, a Canadian official said tonight, while Iraqi police have arrested eight Sunni Arabs for allegedly plotting to assassinate the investigating judge in the case against Saddam Hussein.
Dan McTeague, parliamentary secretary for Canadians abroad, said the incident happened yesterday, but refused to name the organisation the two Canadians worked for or the location where they were kidnapped.
McTeague said the group “has not requested any assistance at this time.”
He said officials both in Canada’s embassy in Amman, Jordan and Ottawa are in contact with the organisation and are standing by to provide assistance. Canada doesn’t have an embassy in Iraq yet.
“Our ability to provide assistance is limited,” McTeague said.
The Canadian government has advised since April of 2004 that Canadians, including humanitarian workers, should not to travel to Iraq.
Yesterday, Iraqi police have arrested eight Sunni Arabs in the northern city of Kirkuk for allegedly plotting to assassinate the investigating judge who prepared the case against Saddam Hussein, a senior police commander said.
The men were carrying a document from former top Saddam deputy Izzat al-Douri ordering them to kill Raed Juhi, said Col. Anwar Qadir, a police commander in Kirkuk, where the men were arrested on Saturday.
Al-Douri is the highest ranking member of the Saddam regime still at large and is believed to be at least the symbolic leader of Saddam loyalists still fighting US forces and the new government in Iraq.
“As an Iraqi citizen and a judge, I am vulnerable to assassination attempts,” Juhi said. “If I thought about this danger, then I would not be able to perform my job … I will practice my profession in a way that serves my country and satisfies my conscience.”
The arrest came two days before Saddam’s trial resumes after a five-week break.
The first prosecution witnesses are expected to testify before the five-judge panel, offering accounts of the deaths of more than 140 Shiite villagers following an assassination attempt against Saddam in the town of Dujail in 1982.
If convicted Saddam and his seven co-defendants could be sentenced to death by hanging.
Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark arrived in Baghdad today, airport officials said, apparently to aid in Saddam’s defence.
Clark, who worked for former US President Lyndon B. Johnson, has worked as an adviser to nearly a dozen international lawyers on Saddam’s defence team. He has contended that Saddam’s rights have been violated in the legal process following his capture.
US and Iraqi officials have warned of an upsurge in insurgent attacks ahead of the December 15 elections, in which voters will choose the first fully constitutional parliament since Saddam Hussein’s rule collapsed in April 2003.
President Jalal Talabani said that insurgent groups have responded to his call for talks and have contacted his office.
“We are receiving calls from groups who claim to be from the resistance and they are expressing their support for meetings” with the government, Talabani told reporters. “We want to convince every sincere Iraqi who is carrying arms to come and participate in the political process.”
Talabani did not name the groups that contacted his office, but residents of Anbar province said Thursday that four insurgent groups that are active in that area are conferring among themselves to chose a representative to meet government officials.
In an interview published in The Observer former interim prime minister Ayad Allawi said that human rights abuses in Iraq are now as bad as they were under Saddam Hussein.
“People are doing the same as Saddam’s time and worse,” he was quoted as saying. “It is an appropriate comparison.”
Allawi accused fellow Shiites in the government of being responsible for death squads and secret torture centres.
“These were the precise reasons that we fought Saddam and now we are seeing the same thing,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.
For months, Sunni Arabs have been accusing the Interior Ministry of wholesale arrests and abuse of Sunnis in an attempt to find a handful of rebels. The discovery by US troops this month of up to 173 detainees – malnourished and some showing signs of torture – hidden in an Interior Ministry building in central Baghdad gave credence to those charges.
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