Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal News Blogs -> JURIST - The Paper Chase

Legal News

: JURIST - The Paper Chase

Iraq releases jailed interior ministry officials suspected of Baath party ties

By Bernard Hibbitts (editor) and University of Pittsburgh School of Law students.

[JURIST] Iraqi Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani said Friday that 23 employees of the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior who were arrested this week for alleged attempts to rebuild Saddam Hussein's Baath party have been released. On Saturday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said that the arrested individuals were not planning a coup against the government. Interior Ministry spokesperson Major-General Abdul Karim Khalaf said that the men will not face charges and that they have been returned to their families. The US-run Coalition Provisional Authority prioritized outlawing the Baath Party, and in 2003 Iraq established the De-Baathification Commission aimed at rooting out members of Hussein's party from positions of power in the Iraqi government. The Commission prompted the forced removal of approximately 30,000 Baathists from public life. The Bush administration eventually urged the Iraqi government to shift the commission from outright prohibition to "accountability and reconciliation" in the interests of countering the growing insurgency in the country. De-Baathification reform legislation was praised by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Earlier this year, Iraq adopted the controversial Accountability and Justice Law, which allows most former Baathists to be reinstated to public life.

Full post as published by JURIST - The Paper Chase on December 20, 2008 (boomark / email).