Ugent: Please read below and take action. Americans: This is happening under OUR illegal and immoral occupation of Iraq. It is your MORAL imperative to do all you can do to end our occupation of Iraq and work to bring our criminal government to justice.
Stop the executions!
Source: The Brussell's Tribunal
Statement of Hana Albayaty, Ian Douglas, Abdul Ilah Albayaty, Iman Saadoon, Dirk Adriaensens and Ayse Berktay (14 Feb 2006)
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* Selected statements and actions against the imminent execution of 3 Iraqi women.
* Update on actions to stop the execution of three Iraqi women (01 March 2007)
* CALL FOR WORLDWIDE INTENSIFYING MOBILIZATION - Second update on efforts to stop the summary execution of three Iraqi women (03 March 2007)
Wassan Talib, 31 years old, Zainab Fadhil, 25 years old, and Liqa Omar Muhammad, 26 years old, face imminent execution in Iraq, all charged with “offences against the public welfare” by a government that cannot even provide electricity but fills the streets with dead bodies. All are in Baghdad’s Al-Kadhimiya Prison. Two have small children beside them. The 1-year-old daughter of Liqa was born in prison. All women deny the charges for which they face hanging.
Paragraph 156 of the Iraqi Penal Code, under which they were judged, reads: “Any person who wilfully commits an act with intent to violate the independence of the country or its unity or the security of its territory and that act by its nature, leads to such violation is punishable by death.” Iraq’s “puppet” government charges these women with its own crimes.
None of the three women was permitted to see a lawyer. The trials to which they were subject are illegal under international law. All three are prisoners of war with protected rights under the Third Geneva Convention. Their execution would not only be illegal and summary, it would be utterly immoral. Civilization around the world reviles the death penalty while Iraq’s feudal leaders make a public spectacle of executions.
In a country where it is evident there is no state or judicial system, the occupation and its puppet government use, as all repressive regimes in history, fake tribunals to exterminate those who oppose them. No legal judgement can be issued while there isn’t the civilised conditions of due process, at least the presence and security of lawyers.
Iraqi women are testament to the life of the nation of Iraq. By contrast, the US-installed government, in its backwardness, imposes only a culture of death. Whereas Iraq was the most progressive state in the region for women’s rights, with the US invasion protective legislation was cancelled. The United States and its local conspirators, in creating hundreds of thousands of widows and reducing life in Iraq to a struggle for bare survival, have placed women in the crosshairs and now on the gallows.
Women are always the first and last victims of war. We celebrate the numberless acts of resistance of Iraqi women, whether their resilience in the face of a culture of rape, torture and murder by US and Iraqi forces, their fortitude in continuing to give life amid state-sponsored genocide, their dignity as they try to maintain a semblance of normality for their children and families, their courage in burying their husbands, sons, daughters or brothers, or in direct action against an illegal and failed military occupation.
We demand the release of Wassan, Zainab and Liqa and all political prisoners in Iraq. We call upon all persons, organisations, parliaments, workers, syndicates and states to withdraw recognition from this pro-occupation, sectarian Iraqi government. We call for immediate protest in front of every Iraqi embassy worldwide. There is no honour in murdering women. Occupation is the highest form of dictatorship. It is not these three women who should be prosecuted; it is this government and its foreign paymaster.
Hana Albayaty
Ian Douglas
Abdul Ilah Albayaty
Iman Saadoon
Dirk Adriaensens
Ayse Berktay
Statement by Hana Albayaty, Ian Douglas, Abdul Ilah Albayaty, Iman Saadoon, Dirk Adriaensens and Ayse Berktay (1 March 2007)
END THIS CRIME NOW!
Update on actions to stop the execution of three Iraqi women
On 14 February we launched an appeal to halt the summary execution of three Iraqi women. Hundreds signed our statement, including numerous organizations, and demonstrations have taken place in Istanbul, Ankara, Rabat, Berlin and Stockholm, among other cities.
Wassan Talib (31), Zainab Fadhil (25) and Liqa Omar Muhammad (26) were reportedly sentenced to death on charges that amount to supporting the legitimate and legal popular resistance to occupation in Iraq.
We issue this statement now to highlight that the situation in Iraq inaugurated and sustained by a defeated occupation and its local sectarian puppet forces makes the defence of human rights practically impossible.
In Baghdad in particular, some individuals that we are regularly in contact with, and others that were contacted for this specific case, report facing the same situation, one so volatile that they cannot even verify the whereabouts or wellbeing of their own families. Unable to move, or else fleeing for their lives en masse amidst the murderous Bush-Maliki “surge”, Iraqis are enduring waves of military repression and violence.
We tried to reach the families of the three women and their lawyer. We tried to verify their convictions, the charges on which they were convicted, and their wellbeing or status. We tried to verify the date of their prospective executions, and ascertain if an appeals process is underway. Until now, despite efforts along numerous channels (including contacting legal organizations in Iraq directly, along with human rights practitioners), no information has been forthcoming from within or outside Iraq.
We continue to work on the assumption that our information is credible: that the women may be executed as early as Saturday, 3 March 2007. We ask people of conscience everywhere to continue their mobilization and bring pressure on detaining authorities - both the Iraqi government and the occupation- to release information on the three women and free them. We call for similar pressure to be placed on human rights actors to intervene.
Summary executions and arbitrary detention are high crimes under international law for which the occupation must be held accountable. We should intensify our protests and support all actions against this occupation in order to be millions in the street by 20 March 2007. It is our moral duty to end this crime now!
Hana Albayaty
Ian Douglas
Abdul Ilah Albayaty
Iman Saadoon
Dirk Adriaensens
Ayse Berktay
Statement by Hana Al Bayaty, Ian Douglas, Abdul Ilah Albayaty, Iman Saadoon, Dirk Adriaensens and Ayse Berktay (2 March 2007)
CALL FOR WORLDWIDE
INTENSIFYING MOBILIZATION
Second update on efforts to stop the
summary execution of three Iraqi women
Twenty-four hours ago we issued an urgent alert, stating that the defence of human rights in Iraq, as a result of US occupation and its sectarian puppet forces, is practically impossible. But the awareness by thousands of this fact explains the overwhelming mobilization we are witnessing in defence of three Iraqi women facing the gallows.
Individuals, intellectuals, women’s organizations, lawyers’ associations, human rights groups, trade unions and political movements effectively networked and took initiative worldwide. The popular pressure that has been built from everywhere, via numerous routes, impelled, among others:
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Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, on Friday 2 March, to place a direct call to Nouri El-Maliki, expressing Turkey’s alarm at the proposed execution of Wassan Talib, Zainab Fadhil and Liqa Omar Muhammad
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Ann Clwyd MP, special envoy to war criminal Tony Blair on human rights in Iraq, to write to Iraqi authorities outlining her opposition to the death penalty in all cases and calling for investigations into the circumstances of the trials of the three Iraqi women
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Abdullah Gul, foreign minister of Turkey, to announce that he would raise the issue of executions in Iraq in his 3 March meetings with foreign ministers of the Arab League
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Luisa Morgantini, vice-president of the European Parliament, to remind the Iraqi government that no state has the right to kill and that Wassan, Zainab and Liqa are prisoners of war with protected status under the Geneva Conventions
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Martin Shultz, president of the Socialist Group in the European Parliament, to remind Jalal Talabani that the European Union opposes the death penalty
Today we received information via the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention that the three Iraqi women will not be executed until an appeals court has ruled on their cases. This assurance came from Iraqi authorities. It is not enough. We demand to know the charges on which these three Iraqi women stand convicted. We demand to know the date of their appeal hearings. We demand that a public statement is made. We demand that they be afforded all due protections under international human rights and humanitarian law. If charged with resisting foreign occupation and aggression, we declare this charge illegal.
While Wassan, Zainab and Liqa are no longer anonymous, 20 million other Iraqis face imminent threats in towns and cities where occupation-sponsored death squads continue to operate with impunity and where rape and torture by US and Iraqi puppet forces is endemic. Over one million have been arbitrarily deprived of the right to life and tens of thousands more arbitrarily detained. Backward and sectarian forces have been installed in power and the achievements of the Iraqi people over the past 100 years have been reduced to ashes.
The end of oppression, of summary executions and assassinations, of arbitrary detentions, rape and torture, of mass murder, civil strife and genocide, and the destruction of civilization, culture and history, comes with the end of the occupation.
The occupation of Iraq is no less than the concrete implementation of the ideology driving the so-called war on terror; permanent war, the denial of civil liberties and the exclusion of international law from international relations that prevents the peaceful coexistence and reciprocal advancement of peoples and cultures. The depth of solidarity and defence of human dignity, justice and most basic human rights expressed in the case of these three Iraqi women is proof that humanity refuses this regression.
From Berlin to Baghdad, we salute all those that through public demonstrations, personal moral conviction, or resistance in their given situation, have linked the lives of three Iraqi women — indeed, all Iraqi women — to the dignity and resilience of the nation of Iraq under the hammer of a defeated occupation.
As 20 March 2007 — the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq — approaches, we hope all stay mobilized to secure the wellbeing of Wassan, Zeinab and Liqa. We demand the liberation of all political prisoners in Iraq.
We also call for worldwide, intensifying mobilization to stop this illegal blood-soaked occupation, struggle to uphold international law by retrieving recognition from the criminal sectarian puppet Iraqi government, recognizing the Iraqi Resistance as the sole representative of the will of the Iraqi people, and demanding the unconditional and immediate withdrawal of all occupation forces.
The only solution in Iraq is the sovereignty of the Iraqi people.
We stand with millions in defence of justice. We stand with millions in defence of Iraq. Our hearts are Iraqi.
Hana Al Bayaty
Ian Douglas
Abdul Ilah Albayaty
Iman Saadoon
Dirk Adriaensens
Ayse Berktay
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