Mission & Justice

Habib Toumi: 4/11/08; (3 Items)

A Bahraini who was expected to mark the third anniversary of his release from Guantanamo on Tuesday has landed up in a Saudi prison. “I was hopeful that with the news coming from Saudi Arabia about the impending transfer of the two Bahrainis held there, we would see an end to a tragedy. Unfortunately, now, a third Bahraini is being held,” MP Mohammad Khalid said on Monday. “With three Bahrainis held there, I am afraid that the situation would become more complex unless the authorities act decisively,” said the MP, who represents the Islamic Menbar, the third-largest bloc in parliament.

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Sami Moubayed; 30/10/08; (6 Items)

Syrian Prime Minister Mohammad Naji Otari’s order to close down an American school and cultural centre in the wake of Sunday’s US attack that killed eight people has been received with mixed feelings. “I withdrew my children [from the school] a long time ago, I don’t care what happens to that school,” Leena, a 42-year-old Damascus resident, told Gulf News. There were some, however, who felt that the “rash” decision would jeopardise the education of students by forcing them to switch schools in the middle of the academic year.

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10/10/08

A senior Iraqi Kurdish official warned Turkey on Thursday against stationing troops inside Iraq and said such a move would not stop cross-border raids by Kurdish guerrillas. New attacks on Turkish security forces by Kurd-istan Workers Party (PKK) rebels based in Iraq have strained ties between Baghdad and Ankara, which accuses its neighbour of not doing enough to combat the separatists. Anger over PKK attacks is mounting in Turkey, and opposition parties are calling on the government to set up a buffer zone inside northern Iraq to prevent rebels from crossing the border.

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3/8/08

Iraqi lawmakers said they have failed to defuse tensions over the disputed city of Kirkuk in informal talks, on the eve of a special Parliament session on the issue. Kurdish demands to annex the oil-rich-city of Kirkuk to their semi-autonomous region in Iraq’s north have set off ethnic tensions. More than 1,000 Sunni Arabs and Turkomen held a peaceful protest yesterday in the town of Hawija, west of Kirkuk, to protest the demands. The dispute has emerged as a huge threat to the Shiite-led government’s efforts to heal the country’s sectarian rifts and prevent a new cycle of violence. The Parliament’s session today will try to resolve a power-sharing disagreement in Kirkuk which has blocked legislation that would set the stage for US-backed provincial elections.

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Sian Powell; 31/5/08

Safra Atroushi despises the men of his clan who decided a 19-year-old woman had to die to cleanse the family’s honour. He despises his cousin who shot her, his other cousins who were there for the kill and his uncle who helped plan it. Originally from Kurdistan in northern Iraq, Safar lives near Liverpool in southwestern Sydney in a modest house with his wife, Jwan, and his two young children. He is the first Australian to speak out about an honour killing in his family. “Some people, when a woman gets married and if she is dishonest and she has sex (outside the marriage), some people kill their wives,” he says. “But if she is a girl and she loves someone, in my opinion this is not a crime. They killed Pela because she loved someone.”

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24/5/08

Medics in Iraqi Kurdistan said on Saturday that they had seen a surge in violence against women in May, with both so-called “honour” killings and female suicides on the increase. “At least 14 women died in the first 10 days of May alone,” a doctor told AFP in the region’s second largest city of Sulaimaniyah. “Seven of them took their own lives, the other seven were murdered in still unexplained circumstances” - apparently the victims of “honour” killings. “Over the same period, we recorded 11 attempted self-immolations. These women were so desperate they set fire to themselves,” the doctor added, asking not to be identified. According to Kurdish regional government figures, in Sulaimaniyah province alone more than 50 women attempted suicide by burning in the first four months of the year and another eight tried to hang themselves.

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23/4/08

Turkish warplanes have hit Kurdish rebel targets in northern Iraq. At least four military jets bombed Kurdish separatist targets on Wednesday, a Turkish military source said, adding that no information on casualties was immediately available. Ahmed Danees, a rebel spokesman, said the strikes had taken place late on W ednesday afternoon in the northeast part of Iraq’s Arbil province, close to the Turkey-Iran border. Kurdish rebels, fighting for independence since 1984, have been seeking autonomy for Kurds in southeast Turkey

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