First Iraq votes cast in poll opposed by militants

By Paul Tait

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq’s election for its first full-term
parliament since Saddam Hussein’s overthrow began with special
groups voting on Monday. Militants branded the poll ungodly and
vowed to turn the country into an Islamic state.

Election day is set for Thursday but the infirm, security
forces members and detainees voted early in hospitals, barracks
and jails, inking their fingers to guard against multiple
voting before dropping their votes into plastic ballot boxes.

“They are all looking forward to this voting process since
this will be good for the Iraqi people,” said Youssef Ibrahim,
an electoral commission worker at a Baghdad hospital.

But Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s al Qaeda in
Iraq and four other Sunni Arab groups, including the Army of
the Victorious Sect and the Brigades of Islamic Jihad, said the
election was nothing more than “a Crusader conspiracy.”

“This so-called political process — and those who take
part in these apostate elections — is forbidden by God’s laws
and goes against our Muslim constitution, the Koran,” they said
in a joint statement posted on an Islamist Web site.

“We declare that we will carry on our jihad in the name of
God until an Islamic state ruled by the Koran is established,”
the groups said. They did not threaten election day attacks.

The election is being contested against a backdrop of
sectarian tensions between the Sunni Arab minority dominant
under Saddam and the Shi’ite and Kurdish blocs which dominated
the January vote and are again expected to win the most seats.

Those tensions are likely to rise further after media
reports on Monday that more prisoners showing signs of torture,
had been found in another Interior Ministry jail in Baghdad.

MORE MISTREATED PRISONERS

An Iraqi Human Rights Ministry spokesman said an inspection
team went to the facility four days ago and found 13 prisoners
there who he described as being in “poor condition.”

A U.S. military spokeswoman confirmed that 13 prisoners had
been taken from the facility for treatment but gave no details.

The detention center was the first examined as part of a
government-ordered inquiry after U.S. troops last month found
173 malnourished prisoners, some showing signs of torture, in
an Interior Ministry bunker in Baghdad.

Sunni Arabs accuse the Shi’ite and Kurdish-led government
of sending “death squads” against them in revenge for crimes
committed during the former Sunni-dominated government of
Saddam. The government denies the charges.

Security measures are coming into force before Thursday’s
vote, seen as an important step for Iraq’s fledgling democracy
and a signpost on the way toward the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

They include travel restrictions, night-time curfews and
the sealing of borders to guard against attempts by insurgents
to disrupt the vote for postwar Iraq’s first four-year
assembly.

Iraq’s defense ministry said on Sunday it believed triple
rings of protection, composed of police inside polling stations
and Iraqi armed forces outside backed by an outer cordon of
U.S.-led forces, would prevent major attacks.

But it predicted the ballot would follow the pattern of
January’s vote for an interim government, when insurgent
attacks dramatically increased in the period after the
election.

SUNNI ARAB VOTE

One difference this time is that Sunni Arabs, who largely
boycotted the January election, are expected to vote in
significant numbers in what would be seen as a success for
attempts by the government and its U.S. backers to persuade
them to turn away from the insurgency and join the political
process.

While many Iraqis have been concentrating on the elections,
the insurgency and Saddam’s trial, Western anxiety has been
focused on the fate of foreign hostages kidnapped in Iraq.

There was still no word on Monday what has happened to four
Christian aid workers being held by a little-known Islamist
militant group called Swords of Truth, which had threatened to
kill them on Saturday unless its demands were met.

The group has been holding the four Westerners — two
Canadians, a Briton and an American — for more than two weeks
and wants thousands of prisoners released from Iraqi jails.

London and Washington have said they are working to secure
their release but will not yield to their captors’ demands.

Kidnappers have seized eight foreigners in Iraq since late
November and are still holding six, including a German
archaeologist and a French engineer.

On Saturday, police said they found the body of an Egyptian
translator who had worked for the U.S. military in Saddam’s
home town of Tikrit.

Earlier this week, an Iraqi Islamist group said in a so-far
unverified Internet statement that it had killed a U.S.
security contractor it had kidnapped.

(Additional reporting by Washington newsroom, Dubai
newsroom Deepa Babington, Luke Baker and Aseel Kami in Baghdad)