Iraq to offer amnesties, then executions....

[MKSheppard]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0, ... 06,00.html

Like a menu of choice, we will offer the amnesties first, then the executions'

The Times (UK) ^ | 7/12/04 | Richard Lloyd Parry

IRAQ’S new Government is to pursue a carrot-and-stick approach to the country’s security crisis with a general amnesty for insurgents to be followed by a revival of judicial executions, the country’s President told The Times yesterday.

The steps will cause disquiet in America and Britain, the two key partners in the coalition which overthrew Saddam Hussein.

The amnesty will bring immunity from punishment to the killers of more than 550 coalition soldiers since the end of the war, while the restoration of the death penalty will conflict with Britain’s long-standing policy not to co-operate with any trial that could end in execution.

Sheikh Ghazi al-Yawer, 46, is a tribal chief and early critic of the occupation who was appointed President by the now-defunct Iraqi Governing Council last month against the wishes of Paul Bremer, the coalition’s now-departed chief administrator.

A visit to his office in the heart of Baghdad’s US-run green zone vividly demonstrates the need to curb the violence which threatens the country’s tentative steps towards independence and democracy.

Just 300 yards away is a pothole left by an incoming mortar. His office is reached after four body-searches and five identity checks. Half the people inside his office are British, Australian and South African security guards carrying automatic rifles under their tattooed arms.

The President, wearing Arab dress, said that a law outlining the terms of the amnesty was likely in the next few days, and that it would be followed by the revival of the death penalty which was frozen by the coalition soon after Saddam’s fall.

“It’s good to have a carrot-and-stick approach,” he said. “We will offer the amnesty first, then we will have this law for executions...so there is a menu to choose from. It’s up to (the insurgents) to make a smart choice.” The amnesty has been agreed by the Cabinet of the Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, and Sheikh al-Yawer will sign it into being when the legal details have been finalised. But yesterday he outlined a comprehensive “no questions” pardon for “politically oriented violence”.

“If they sincerely feel that they are sorry for what they have done and they sign an undertaking that it will never happen again...we shouldn’t ask (any questions),” the President said.

“They killed our flesh and blood. . .they killed close friends of mine. If we keep nagging about this then it will be a circle of blood, and we want to break that circle of blood.”

The amnesty is an attempt to drive a wedge between factions of what the Government believes to be an increasingly fractious insurgency, divided between hard-line foreign extremists and former members of Saddam’s Baath party.

By appealing to the nationalist loyalties of the latter, the Government hopes to isolate the former, and draw Iraqi insurgents into the political process leading to the general election planned for next year.

Sheikh al-Yawer said that he had indirectly sent messages to members of the insurgency to appeal for their surrender under the amnesty. “I cannot and I will not ever get in touch with people who are killing, but indirectly I am passing them messages — ‘you can run, but you cannot hide’,” he said. “A lot of people say that they are willing to make use of the amnesty, and (they) want to do it through (me).

“If there are witnesses to say, ‘That guy killed two soldiers’, then that is an individual criminal case which can be brought to justice,” Sheikh al-Yawer said.

“You can’t incriminate a whole city or a whole village or a whole group of people. In the UK you have offered amnesty to the IRA so this is just natural.”

In theory, applications for amnesty will be assessed by a judge, but few people are expected to be refused. “I don’t think anyone will be stupid enough to come and say, ‘By the way, I killed two or three guys’,” he said. “And we are not going to torture them to say that.”

The success of any amnesty will depend on how it is implemented, but the President gave few practical details. It will be conducted locally, at police stations and military bases.

Insurgents will have to sign a document and surrender their heavy weapons. But in a country awash with stray machineguns, rocket-propelled grenades and even surface-to-air missiles, it is hard to see how the effectiveness of a weapons amnesty can be monitored.

There is no doubt that most Iraqis support the restoration of the death penalty, but Sheikh al-Yawer insisted that the criminal code of the old regime would be amended.

Under Saddam, scores of crimes including membership of opposition political parties were punishable by death.

Sheikh al-Yawer said: “We will filter out the things which are too harsh. We must have a live-and-let-live society. Saddam Hussein had a live-and-let-die society.”

[BlkbrryTheGreat]

Good plan, but as the article pointed out it will have limited effectivness due to the large amount of weapons available.