Kamal Kadir Karim
, an Iraqi-born Kurd and Austrian citizen who was
jailed by Kurdish authorities in October, went on a
hunger strike Monday to protest his incarceration,
according to his relatives and friends in Austria
and Germany.
His jailers are not the Baath Party apparatchiks of
the old regime, but the Kurdish leadership of this
semiautonomous region of Kurdistan in northern Iraq.
Karim, 48, who is a graduate of the University of
Vienna and the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna and has
doctorates in law, political science and
international diplomacy, was one of the numerous
experts consulted by the State Department and the
European Union in the drafting of Iraq's new
constitution.
From Austria, Karim had written Internet articles
critical of the Kurdish regional government and the
Kurdish Democratic Party headed by Massoud Barzani ,
alleging corruption, abuse of power and maltreatment
of women. One article alleged that the KGB made
payments to Barzani when the Soviet bloc was
supporting Kurdish separatists in their quest for
autonomy. |
Dr Kamal Said Qadir, Austrian citizen, an
international legal expert, writer and human rights
activist |
|
Karim returned to Erbil, a city in Kurdistan
(northern Iraq), in September to take up a
teaching position at Salahuddin University's school
of political science. On Oct. 26, he received a
telephone call from people claiming to be his
students and requesting a meeting at a local hotel,
according to his sister, Galvarej Zaman , who lives
in the German town of Heilbronn, near Stuttgart.
At the hotel, Karim was abducted by KDP members and
thrown into a small jail cell, according to his
relatives. He was deprived of food and water and was
tortured, they said. The family received no news
from him for five days.
Two weeks later, following an uproar in the Kurdish
media, the KDP admitted it had detained Karim,
relatives said. It was not until January that Karim
was visited by officials of the International
Committee of the Red Cross. International pressure
led to his transfer to a larger cell.
Karim was not allowed to choose a lawyer and was
informed of the charges against him, which included
defamation, just one hour before his trial began. He
was sentenced to 30 years in prison, according to a
friend, a physician in Austria, who spoke on
condition that he not be further identified because
he feared reprisals against family members still
living in Iraq.
Karim had expected to receive a reduced sentence at
a court session Sunday, but the judge adjourned the
case until March 9 to give the defense time to
produce articles written by Karim in the last six
months, his brother-in-law, Taha Mohammed Zaman ,
said in a telephone interview from Germany on
Wednesday.
Karim's hunger strike was prompted by the
postponement of the trial after four months in jail,
said Galvarej Zaman, his sister.
"I will remain on hunger strike until I am released
or until my death," Karim said, according to his
sister and reports in the Kurdish press.
Another sister, Araz Kadir Karim , lives in Erbil
and visits Karim daily, Zaman said.
Nijyar Shemdin , the representative of the Kurdish
regional government in Washington, said by telephone
Thursday that Karim had "used profanities and
unsubstantiated information slighting the honor of
certain Kurdish families. He has no right to
slander."
"He has asked for a pardon, and maybe the verdict
was disproportionate to the crime committed, but
this law is now being discussed for review," Shemdin
said. "I think the court may slash the 30-year
sentence to 15 years. So whether the law was just or
not is now being discussed. His reports, however,
showed a lack of manners."
Karim said he was prepared to apologize to officials
for the distress he had caused them but would never
concede that his information was false, according to
his friend the physician, also of Kurdish origin.
The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad ,
Austrian officials, Amnesty International and other
rights groups have lobbied on Karim's behalf. "Kamal
Karim's sentence of 30 years in prison for
expressing an opinion is an outrage that focuses
international attention on the arbitrary nature of
the justice system in Iraq's Kurdistan," wrote Ann
Cooper , the executive director of the Committee to
Protect Journalists. "We call on President Barzani
to dissociate himself from this draconian punishment
meted out by a court that did not grant the
defendant a fair hearing and due process. We urge
the court of appeals to overturn the conviction."
After obtaining verbal assurances from the Barzani
clan, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari ,
himself a Kurd, informed the Austrian envoy in
Baghdad, Gudrun Ha rr er , that Karim had been
freed. The Austrian foreign minister, Ursula Plasnik
, posted news of the release on the foreign service
Web site and praised it as one of Harrer's first
accomplishments as an envoy to Baghdad. But the
announcement had to be retracted after Austrian
diplomats were informed by Karim's sister in Erbil
that she had just visited her brother in jail,
according to Zaman and the family friend.
In a letter written to Khalilzad and shared with The
Post, Karim's friend in Vienna wrote: "The criminal
proceedings are clearly against international
standards of the rule of law and also against
democratization in Iraq." If not lifted, "the
verdict would tarnish the credibility of America and
its democracy-building efforts" and "could help the
forces hostile to democracy in Iraq."
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