A top election official said yesterday that Iraqi law will allow former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and thousands of other Iraqi detainees who have not been brought to trial to vote in this weekend's crucial constitutional referendum.
However, Abdul Hussein Hindawi, the head of the Independent Electoral Commission in Iraq, said it was still awaiting a full list from the Interior Ministry and the US-led coalition of the detainees who should be allowed to receive ballots and vote on Saturday at Abu Ghraib prison and several other US detention centers.
"All non-convicted detainees have the right to vote. That includes Saddam and other former government officials. They will vote," Hindawi said in a telephone interview. Saddam's long-awaited trial is scheduled to begin Oct. 19 on charges that he and seven of his regime's henchmen ordered the 1982 massacre of 143 people in a mainly Shiite town north of Baghdad following a failed attack on Saddam's life.
More than 12,000 detainees are being held at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, Camp Bucca and two other US military camps in Iraq, many awaiting trial or, in some cases, formal charges. Many of the detainees are believed to be Sunni Arabs who were rounded up by US and Iraqi forces on suspicion of supporting Sunni-led insurgent groups.
Across Iraq, militants are currently demanding that Iraqis boycott the referendum and have killed at least 340 people in the last 16 days in a series of attacks, including suicide car bombs, roadside bombs and drive-by shootings.
That included a US soldier and six Iraqis who were killed in Baghdad on Monday by a suicide bomber who detonated a car full of mortars near an entrance to the fortified Green Zone, where Iraq's parliament and the US embassy are located.
The American death brought to 1,956 the number of US service members who have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an AP count.
Yesterday, a car bomb exploded in a crowded market in a town in northwest Iraq, killing 30 Iraqis and wounding 35, police said.
The blast occurred at about 11am in Tal Afar, 420km northwest of Baghdad, when the bomb was detonated by remote control as many people shopped in the market, said Brigadier Najim Abdullah, the town's police chief.
He said no Iraqi security forces or US soldiers were in the area at the time.
Tal Afar is 150km east of the Syrian border.
In the capital, gunmen opened fire on Monday on a convoy carrying delegates from the Arab League in Baghdad during its first visit to Iraq since the fall of Saddam.
The League has met resistance from Shiite and Kurdish leaders as it tries to piece together a reconciliation conference with Sunnis. A policeman was wounded in the shooting, but no one in the delegation was hurt.
The violence comes four days ahead of Iraq's key vote on the new constitution, which Kurds and the majority Shiites largely support and the Sunni Arab minority rejects. Sunnis are campaigning to defeat the charter at the polls, though officials from all sides have been trying up to the last minute to decide on changes to the constitution to swing Sunni support.
Many Sunnis fear the document would create nearly autonomous Kurdish and Shiite mini-states in the north and south, where Iraq's oil wealth is located, and leave most Sunnis isolated in central and western Iraq under a weak central government in Baghdad.
Whether the constitution passes or fails, Iraq is due to hold elections for a new parliament on Dec. 15.
In another development, Iraq has issued arrest warrants against the defense minister and 27 other officials from former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's US-backed government over the alleged disappearance or misappropriation of US$1 billion in military procurement funds, officials said.
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