Police, prisoners cast first votes in Iraqi poll

By Paul Tait

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Soldiers, police officers and prisoners
voted in Iraq’s election on Monday, three days before the rest
of the country goes to the polls to choose its first full-term
parliament since Saddam Hussein was overthrown.

Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari defended his government’s
record on fighting the insurgency but was forced to admit that
more abused prisoners had been found inside jails overseen by
his own Interior Ministry.

Al Qaeda and other militants branded the election ungodly
and vowed to turn Iraq into an Islamic state, although their
statement was muted in tone compared to the threats of violence
such groups issued before the last election on January 30.

In another contrast to the January vote, boycotted by most
of Iraq’s Sunni Arabs, over 1,000 Sunni scholars issued a
statement urging the electorate to turn out in force.

Election day is on Thursday but the infirm, members of the
security forces and prisoners were allowed to vote early,
inking their fingers to guard against multiple voting before
dropping their votes into plastic ballot boxes.

Former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s office issued a
statement as soon as polls closed claiming that he had won the
votes of police officers in the provinces of Anbar and Maysan.

Iraq’s electoral commission dismissed the claim, saying it
was far too early to know. Full results of the vote are not
expected until the end of the year or even early January.

Allawi, a secular Shi’ite who led Iraq’s unelected
U.S.-appointed government from mid-2004, is leading a broad
coalition vowing to curb the gunmen, kidnappers and suicide
bombers who have made life a torment for many ordinary Iraqis.

He has branded Jaafari’s government toothless, a charge
rejected by the prime minister at a news conference on Monday.

“People realize clearly how the security situation has
changed, and remember how things were at the start of 2005
(when Allawi was in power),” Jaafari said.

THIRTEEN PRISONERS ABUSED

However, his government’s moral authority was dealt another
blow by its admission that more abused prisoners had been found
at jails overseen by the Interior Ministry, which is run by the
main Shi’ite party in the ruling coalition.

Some 625 prisoners were found in the jail during a raid by
Iraqi inspectors, backed by the U.S. military, four days ago.

“Thirteen of them had been subjected to abuse, and this
abuse required medical care,” Jaafari’s office said in a
statement, adding that it was investigating the abuse and would
punish those responsible.

The government has been under pressure over its human
rights record since U.S. troops stumbled across a secret bunker
operated by the Interior Ministry last month.

The cramped jail held 173 prisoners, most of them Sunnis
who said they had been beaten, tortured and deprived of food.

Some Sunni Arabs have accused the government of sponsoring
Shi’ite militias to abduct, intimidate and torture them. The
government, made up of Shi’ites and Kurds, denies the charge.

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, dismissed
Thursday’s election as “a Crusader conspiracy.”

“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, without specifically threatening the kind of
election day attacks they carried out in January.

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 curfews and closure
of borders to foil any insurgent plans to disrupt the vote.

With the election only days away, there was still no word
on the fate of four Westerners 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.

Kidnappers have seized at least eight foreigners in Iraq
since late November and are still holding six.

(Additional reporting by Dubai newsroom and Deepa
Babington, Luke Baker, Ahmed Rasheed, Michael Georgy and Aseel
Kami in Baghdad)