Hater Depot
Joined: 29 Mar 2005
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 Posted: Sun Oct 15, 2006 3:36 am Post subject: US citizen stripped of rights and sentence to death in Iraq |
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By his own countrymen.
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2006/10/american-sentenced-to-death-in-iraq.html
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Today the Associated Press reports the case of an American citizen, Mohammed Munaf, seized by US Forces in Iraq in 2005. Munaf was hauled before the Central Criminal Court of Iraq, and sentenced to death following a proceeding that appears to have been extracted from a novel by Franz Kafka. By far the most distressing aspect of the entire affair is the role played in it by US Forces. "[T]wo U.S. military officials - including a soldier claiming to represent the Romanian Embassy - demanded that Munaf be found 'guilty and should be executed,' the papers say."
Yesterday afternoon I spoke with one of Munaf's American lawyers, and in the evening I discussed the case with one of the Iraqi lawyers who handled it. The judge, he said, had at a prior hearing informed defense counsel that he had reviewed the entire file and had reached a decision to dismiss the charges. "There is no material evidence against your client," he was quoted as stating. When two US officers appeared at the trial date with the prisoner, they reacted with anger when told of the Court's decision � and made clear it was "unacceptable." One of these US officers purported to speak on behalf of the Romanian Embassy, which, he said "demanded the death penalty." (The Government of Romania has since stated both that it had no authorized representative at the hearing and that it did not demand the death penalty). They then insisted upon and got an ex parte meeting with the judge - from which the defendant and his lawyers were excluded. Afterwards an ashen-faced judge emerged, returned to his court and proceeded to sentence the American to death. No evidence was taken; no trial was conducted. The sentence was entered on the basis of a demand by the two American officers that their fellow countryman be put to death. |
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