Middle East Amnesty Produces Chaos

Many observers applaud a move to release Palestinian criminals from Israeli jails. Contrasting this with an October 2002 release of prisoners in Iraq exposes fatal flaws in the U.S.-sponsored road map to peace. What is the biblical answer?

by Cecil Maranville

One of the most urgent needs of Iraq’s 22 million people is the restoration of law and order. A few months before coalition forces undertook the liberation of the country, Saddam Hussein released some 100,000 prisoners, ostensibly as a "thank you" to the nation for its 100 percent vote for him for another seven-year term as president.

Abu Ghareb is one of many prisons Hussein emptied with a wide-ranging amnesty decree in late October 2002, when the dictator was facing increasingly negative world public opinion. Abu Ghareb was "a serious crimes prison," housing up to 9,000 men guilty of capital crimes. Ahmed Ibrahim, deputy warden of the prison, assured the public that the freed prisoners were ready to become a part of society again, because the prison "fixed their behavior."

Now, many of these former convicts wreak murder and mayhem in postwar Iraq, as the country struggles to reestablish police forces and a justice system. Most aren’t looting, but rather are committing armed robbery, rape and murder, according to the U.S. Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. Clearly, assertions that Saddam’s prisons rehabilitated the criminals was total propaganda. Some wonder if Hussein’s declaration of amnesty was a calculated move to create chaos for coalition forces—and for the nation he pretended to thank for its "support" of his dictatorial rule.

The power to imprison or release from prison affords a leader like Hussein incredible leverage in controlling a nation. He detained not only hardened criminals, but also multiple thousands of innocent people, guilty only of disagreeing with him. His penchant for imprisoning people by whim is well known. Political prisoners were tossed into cramped and filthy cells with the worst of criminals and kept imprisoned for many years to maintain his control-by-fear rule.

Read the full article at www.wnponline.org/wnp/wnp0308/middleeast.htm

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