The amnesty included political prisoners

BAGHDAD, October 20 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – President Saddam Hussein on Sunday, October 20 pardoned all prisoners, including political prisoners, to mark his new seven-year presidential term.

According to a decree issued by the Revolution Command Council, the country’s highest ruling body, Saddam announced a “complete, comprehensive and final amnesty for all prisoners, fugitives and detainees jailed due to their negative attitude towards the military service,” reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The amnesty also included “prisoners, detainees and fugitives jailed for political reasons and all other ordinary reasons, including the death sentence ... inside or outside Iraq .”

“Prisoners will be set free immediately except murderers,” the decree said.

The move came amid mounting U.S. threats to launch a military strike against Iraq with the main stated objective being to topple Saddam.

Saddam’s decision also came a day after the Washington Post reported on Saturday, October 19, that U.S. President George W. Bush has authorized U.S. combat training for Iraqi opponents.

The Pentagon has identified as many as 5,000 recruits for an initial training phase to begin next month, said the paper.

Bush authorized the training in a National Security Presidential Directive on October 3 that also approved the expenditure of 92 million dollars in Defense Department funds, it reported quoting administration and military officials.

Defense and State Department officials intend to brief Congress next week on plans to instruct the Iraqis in basic combat as well as specialized skills to serve as battlefield advisers, scouts and interpreters with U.S. ground troops in an invasion force, said the paper.

Others in a force eventually to number about 10,000, will be trained as forward spotters for laser-guided bombs and as military police to run prisoner of war camps inside Iraq , it added.

Officials said the recruits, drawn largely from lists of Iraqis in exile are being provided by the London-based Iraqi National Congress (INC) and vetted by the Pentagon, would be trained together outside the United States.

In recent weeks, the Pentagon has built up equipment stocks in Arab Gulf states, begun dispatching additional combat troops, issued orders to move headquarters units into place and made preparations to facilitate the deployment of tens of thousands of troops should Bush decide to attack.

This week, a U.S. Army task force of Apache helicopters left Europe for Kuwait .

Although U.S.$97 million for opposition training was first authorized in 1998 under the Iraq Liberation Act, a directive signed that year by then-President Bill Clinton restricted expenditures to non-lethal instruction.

Until he signed the new directive early this month, Bush had adhered to Clinton 's prohibitions, and only 5 million dollars of the original money was spent, largely on communications and management training for a handful of exiles.

The funds will now be spent on both training and arming the Iraqis to serve in specialized capacities alongside U.S. troops.

Congress was notified of Bush’s determination to draw down all of the remaining money on October 11, as required under the act, but not of the new directive authorizing lethal training.

The Liberation Act and the Clinton directive both stated “regime change” as the goal of U.S. policy in Iraq .

But they spoke only of providing assistance to opposition efforts to overthrow Saddam, and the law specifically barred the direct use of U.S. military forces.

The imminence of possible military action and the training plan has already exacerbated problems among the exile groups.

Opponents of the plan say it is a barely disguised effort to create a power base for Iraqi National Congress head Ahmed Chalabi.

The INC is one of six groups officially designated by Washington as eligible for funds, although last week’s notice to Congress on the 92 million dollars funding said “other Iraqi opposition groups” may be named.

Although the State Department and Pentagon say they didn’t plan it this way, the recruitment program has been largely in INC hands, a situation that pleases Chalabi supporters but that has outraged other groups.

“The 5,000 or 6,000 names for the Pentagon are Chalabi’s to give,” according to an INC official in Europe .

“Things are blowing Chalabi’s way. He is backed by the Pentagon, so he is in the best shape he has been for a long time, and this is angering rivals,” said one long-time observer of opposition maneuverings.

“The INC is toying with making a Praetorian Guard for Chalabi, because he has no following inside Iraq . I don’t think this kind of thing should be imposed,” said Salah Shaikhly, representative of the Iraqi National Accord, another of the six designated organizations.

Some Iraqi leaders say they are reluctant to choose an exile government for fear of offending Iraqis inside the country who may be weighing a mutiny against Hussein, something that is being advocated by U.S. officials.

U.S. forces must come to Iraq as liberators and not colonizers, said Al-Sharif Ali Bin Al-Hussein, head of the London-based Movement for Constitutional Monarchy (MCM).

“It is unacceptable that the Americans come to govern Iraq . They know that it’s a complicated and very serious issue,” said the Iraqi opposition leader.

“I think that Iraqis, including the opposition, will never accept the intervention of the U.S. army in their internal affairs. There’s no reason for that.

“An American protectorate or American governor in Iraq , that’s unacceptable,” said Ali, a cousin of Iraq ’s king Faisal II, who was deposed in 1958.

The U.S. army will “come as liberators and not colonizers. They will be in Iraq for cooperation and consultation, but they should leave quickly.”

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