http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/06/15/africa/ME-GEN-Iraq-Hanging-Insurgents.phpBAGHDAD - In a northern corner of this baking hot city, inside a broad bend of the Tigris River, dozens of men, and a few women, sit in prison cells and await a rendezvous with Baghdad’s hangmen.
Although polls show many Iraqis favor attacking U.S. occupation troops, some prisoners face the death penalty for doing just that _ for shooting down a U.S. helicopter, firing mortars toward the U.S. Embassy, being caught with the makings of a roadside bomb.
Human rights groups acknowledge that the Iraqi government has an inherent right to prosecute and punish those fighting to bring it down. But they deplore the way it’s being done.
Hina Shamsi, a lawyer with New York-based Human Rights First, said that after Iraq reclaimed sovereignty from the U.S. occupation in 2004, the insurgency became a "non-international armed conflict." This means that under international law, Iraqi militants are considered "unprivileged belligerents ... mere criminals," not entitled to the Geneva Conventions’ full prisoner-of-war protections, she explained.
Rights advocates say, however, that the death penalty law is too sweeping and Iraq’s closed-door trials too perfunctory. It’s part of wider campaigns by activists for greater openness in an Iraqi justice system that operates with little outside scrutiny, no easy access to records, and close but murky ties to U.S. military jailers and investigators. snip
Killing U.S. troops has support among Iraqis. Western-sponsored opinion surveys the past year found that 50 to 60 percent of Iraqis favored such attacks.
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