12-Jan-2012 - Iraq Turns Justice Into a Show, and Terror Confessions a Script

Visted 9 times

“Lift up your faces,” a police officer ordered, as photographers swarmed. Over the objections of Western diplomats and human rights workers, Iraq’s security forces are increasingly taking to the airwaves NFL jerseys china with dramatic demonstrations of how they are cracking down on terrorism, using detainees — mostly Sunni men — as backdrops for speeches and broadcasting confessions on state-run television. To Iraqi officials, the prisoner displays are a kind of victory lap, providing a sharp rebuttal to accusations that the police and the army are failing to stifle a still-deadly insurgency. But to many Westerners, the rituals are inflammatory and even illegal, symptoms of a politically tainted justice system that still relies on confessions, many coerced, as much as physical evidence despite millions in American aid and legal training programs. The prisoner displays are also sharpening the political and sectarian tensions that plunged Iraq’s government into disarray immediately after the American military withdrawal in December. When officials from the country’s Shiite-led government announced an arrest warrant against the Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi, they played videotaped confessions from three bodyguards who accused Mr. Hashimi of personally running a death squad against police officers and political rivals. Iraqi authorities said the confessions were proof of Mr. Hashimi’s guilt. But Sunni politicians saw them as an attack using the state-run media to discredit and oust a leading Sunni politician. American officials and Western diplomats in Baghdad cringed as they watched the confessions play on national television. “Parading persons accused of crimes on television or broadcasting confessions is a violation of due process,” said a Western expert in international law who has raised these concerns with Iraqi officials. “It also undermines basic human dignity and respect for the process of justice.” Legal experts said the government’s media strategies could violate international treaties Iraq had signed, which lay out basic rights for criminal suspects. “It puts them in breach of their international obligations nfl headset and in violation of rights protected by the Constitution,” said the Western expert, who asked for anonymity to avoid antagonizing the Iraqi government. Even some supporters of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki criticized the decision to play the videotaped confessions of Mr. Hashimi’s bodyguards. Iraqi judicial officials pulled out of a news conference the security forces called to announce the arrest warrant because the officials wanted to keep the confessions off the air. Ibrahim al-Sumaidaie, a political analyst close to Mr. Maliki, said broadcasting the confessions shredded due-process rules in Iraq’s Constitution and was reminiscent of how Saddam Hussein manipulated the news media to cow his enemies and expose endless plots against his government. “It is a crime to put this on television,” Mr. Sumaidaie said. “It is a shame, and it is a legacy of the former dictator. The one who plays these confessions succeeds to divide the people between Shia and Sunni again. What is the benefit?” But Iraqi officials have largely brushed off the criticism. In a country where conspiracy theories are the currency of daily life, the confessions and images of shackled prisoners offer convincing evidence that Iraqi officials are hunting down criminals. “If we say we caught the leader of Al Qaeda, who will believe it?” said Maj. Gen. Adel Daham, an Interior Ministry official. “This is to show credibility. We are sure we are doing the right thing.” Iraq is hardly the only country to make public spectacles of suspects accused of criminal activity. Mexican officials call regular news conferences in which uniformed federal police officers stand guard over apprehended members of drug cartels and death custom nfl jerseys squads.

Comments (0)Post Comment View Whole Blog