Law lets Iraqis curb civil rights during violence
BAGHDAD -- Iraq's interim government yesterday announced an emergency law that gives it broader powers to fight insurgents and criminals, including the ability to suspend some basic civil rights in troubled areas of the country.
The law, which went into effect with its signing on Tuesday, gives Prime Minister Iyad Allawi the power to curb meetings and demonstrations, impose curfews, restrict travel, ban or monitor groups that the government deems dangerous, and appoint military governors in areas under emergency rule. To invoke the law, he must win unanimous approval from the country's president and two vice presidents.
Allawi and his Cabinet insisted that the law would not derail the fundamental individual rights Iraqis won for the first time under the interim constitution adopted this spring. Government ministers said they approved the measure reluctantly in order to crack down on insurgent attacks that have killed hundreds of Iraqis and to combat an epidemic of kidnappings and other crimes.
"The new Iraq should be a democratic country, and one of its goals is to protect human rights and human liberties. There is necessarily some conflict between these goals and an emergency law," Minister of Justice Malik Dohan al-Hassan, flanked by Bakhtiar Amin, the minister of human rights, said at a news conference in the heavily guarded, US-controlled Green Zone.
"But . . . the deteriorating security situation calls for these laws," he said. "The security situation threatens all areas of life. The attacks are keeping government employees from their jobs, blocking foreign workers from entering the country to rebuild Iraq. They are trying to derail the democratic process and general elections."
The law cannot be invoked to postpone the January deadline for elections to replace Allawi's appointed government, one provision states.
As the ministers made the announcement, insurgents battled Iraqi and US forces in downtown Baghdad, where firefights have been rare. Gunmen fired at patrolling Iraqi troops from behind the first-floor archways of a residential building, residents said, and US troops returned fire with small arms, at least one tank round, and
The clashes killed at least four people and injured 20, according to the Health Ministry. In another downtown neighborhood, four mortar rounds landed near the office of Allawi's Iraqi National Accord party, injuring six, and in the city's busy commercial Karada district, police defused a car loaded with 1,650 pounds of explosives.
Late into the afternoon, Apache helicopters hovered over Haifa Street, where Arkansas National Guard troops surrounded a building and detained young men for questioning.
The fighting underscored questions about how meaningful emergency rule will be. Iraqi forces still rely on 160,000 US-led troops to back them up. And with the US military able to detain people at will, Iraqis have essentially lived American-imposed martial law since US-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein. Many say that has not left them feeling protected.
"If Americans didn't patrol here, this wouldn't happen. They bring danger with them," said Ali Zekki, 36, who guards a building near Haifa Street and witnessed the morning's fighting.
But, like most Iraqis interviewed over the past week as the Cabinet debated the emergency law, he supported the measure, with reservations.
"If the police are going to use force and be firm, then some people are going to be oppressed," he said. "But the most important thing is, we need security. If they can bring security through martial law, it will be OK."
The law states that emergency rule can be declared whenever Iraqis are exposed to "danger of grave proportions" from "an ongoing campaign of violence" aimed at derailing the political process or at "any other" goal.
The prime minister can then take direct control of security and intelligence services. He or his appointees can freeze suspects' assets, cordon off towns, suspend freedom of assembly, restrict the movements of Iraqis and foreigners, and detain suspects without warrants "in extreme exigent circumstances."
Iraqis who violate the emergency rules are subject to three years in prison.
Allawi's Cabinet has been refining the law for the past week, and several times announced and canceled press conferences to introduce it, as officials wrangled over the details. Iraqi and American legal advisers to the government privately expressed concern over the weekend that the law would open the door to abuses and contradicts the democratic principles the United States has promoted for Iraq. "It sets a terrible precedent," said one Iraqi lawyer who helped write the interim constitution drafted this spring.
But in interviews, Iraqis said overwhelmingly that the emergency law will give the Iraqi authorities a stronger hand and thus more popular support.
"We need it," Baghdad's mayor, Alaa al-Tamimi, said last night of the law.
Iraqi officials continued their campaign to split the insurgency by condemning attacks on Iraqis, particularly those by foreign fighters.
Amin, the human rights minister, said the government and US forces were holding 29 foreign fighters captured in Iraq, among them four Saudis, six Jordanians, a Palestinian, four Syrians, two Lebanese, a Moroccan, two from Turkey, and an Iranian.
But he said the government is finalizing an amnesty for Iraqis who fought US forces out of patriotism and did not kill fellow Iraqis.
Interior Ministry officials said the law could be used if there is a recurrence of uprisings in Najaf or Fallujah. The New York Times, quoting US and Iraqi officials, reports today that a US withdrawal from Fallujah in April inadvertently created a haven for insurgents. At some point, the officials said, the problem will have to be confronted.
Allawi declined to speculate on where and when the law might first be invoked, saying only, "Whenever it is necessary to defeat our enemies."
The Iraqi government can ask US-led forces for help in large military operations carried out under the law or in cases where Iraqi forces are "overwhelmed," Hassan, the justice minister, said.
Amin said Allawi had given him "full authority" to investigate any abuses of the law. He compared the measure to the Patriot Act enacted in the United States after Sept. 11, 2001, which greatly expanded the power of law enforcement agencies.
The government apparently designed the law to minimize the chances of ethnic conflict. To invoke a state of emergency, the prime minister must win consent from the president, now Ghazi al-Yawer, a Sunni Muslim, and his two vice presidents, a Shi'ite Muslim and a Kurd. Invoking the law in the semiautonomous Kurdish north -- where Kurdish parties maintain tens of thousands of militia troops -- requires the consent of the Kurdish regional government.
The government must state the reasons for imposing emergency rule and the area it applies to. The state of emergency expires after 60 days or when the reasons for it no longer exist, whichever comes first. But it can be renewed indefinitely every 30 days.
Material from Associated Press and Reuters was included in this report. Anne Barnard can be reached at abarnard@globe.com.
