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First Iraq Votes Cast in Election Opposed By Militants

Posted on: Monday, 12 December 2005, 18:00 CST

BAGHDAD: Iraq's election for its first full-term parliament since Saddam Hussein's overthrow began with special groups voting yesterday. 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 Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant who headed al- Qaida 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 with 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 yesterday found that more prisoners showing signs of torture in another Interior Ministry jail in Baghdad.

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

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

Source: China Daily; North American ed.

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