Iraq seeks prisoner custody

BAGHDAD – Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Sunday prodded U.S. officials to hand over three former aides of Saddam Hussein who have been condemned for their role in a campaign that killed as many as 180,000 Kurds.

Despite pressure from within his government to spare one of the men, al-Maliki said all three would be hanged once their American captors relinquished custody. Though the death sentences were issued in June, U.S. officials have continued to hold the men.

Al-Maliki said the constitution required the government to carry out the executions and accused those who opposed them of politicizing the judicial process. He also criticized American officials for the delay.

“We won’t back down on our demands of receiving them and executing the verdict as was stated by the law,” he said.

Several members of the government, including prominent Shiite Muslims, have urged leniency for Saddam Hussein’s former minister of defense, Sultan Hashim Ahmad Jabburi Tai.

Tai was the military commander in Saddam’s Anfal campaign, which killed as many as 180,000 Kurds during the 1980s. He was condemned in June along with Ali Hassan al-Majid, Saddam’s first cousin who is known as “Chemical Ali” for his role in the poison-gas killings of the Kurds, and Hussein Rashid Mohammed, the former deputy head of army operations.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, both Kurds, argue that Tai should be spared. Zebari says leniency would set an example for reconciliation.

The death sentences were upheld by an appeals court, but Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, like Tai a Sunni Arab, petitioned a Justice Ministry panel to decide whether the hangings could be carried out without the approval of the Iraqi Presidential Council.

In a news conference Sunday, al-Maliki said the country’s improved security was stimulating an economic resurgence that has reduced unemployment from 60 percent to 20 percent. He did not provide documentation to back up the claim.

Repeating his assertion that the insurgency is defeated, al-Maliki said the government would move toward amnesty for detainees who had not killed.