Iraqi journalists challenge Bremer's decision to dissolve the information ministry

By Mazen Ghazi, IOL Correspondent

BAGHDAD, June 8 (IslamOnline.net) – An Iraqi Administrative Court will on June 15 hold a third hearing in a lawsuit lodged by the Iraqi Press Syndicate against U.S. administrator of Iraq Paul Bremer over his decision to dissolve the information ministry.

A second hearing was adjourned by the judge after Bremer failed to show up although he was notified by the court, the Syndicate chairman Shehab Al-Tamimi told IslamOnline.net.

He said the syndicate filed the suit in May to challenge Bremer's "unjust, inhuman and uncalculated decision" to dissolve the ministry in May 2003, driving thousands of Iraqis, including journalists, jobless.

"The dissolution violates Iraqi laws, and runs in the face of the U.N. Security Council resolutions, which allow the United States to administer Iraq only as an occupying power," Al-Tamimi stressed.

He said the Information Ministry has been part of the Iraqi state ever since its creation in 1921, asserting that its employees, including journalists, are citizens "with rights that any foreign body should not violate".

The syndicate chairman called for the trial to be a "demonstration of protest against the decision, and a call for a ruling to overturn it".

He also regretted that the new interim government, installed on Tuesday, June 1, did not include an information ministry.

Al-Tamimi dismissed Bremer's claims that the ministry was a "trumpet for the former regime."

He indicated that not all the ministry’s employees are media people, adding hundreds of them were civil servants and workers doing "pure administrative works".

IOL correspondent sought a comment from, Aheeb Al-Hareithy, one of two Iraqi lawyers who volunteered to represent the plaintiff.

His niece answered a call on his mobile and said the attorney was assassinated on Wednesday, June 2, by unidentified people.

"Gunmen fired four bullets at him, for no apparent reasons, in Al-Adhamiya neighborhood in Baghdad ".

It was not immediately clear if the assassination had any relation to the case.

Hours after the U.N. approved a resolution endorsing the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq , Bremer announced the dissolution of the Iraqi army forces, other security agencies and the information ministry.

But he later admitted the move as a mistake.

"Many Iraqis have complained to me that the de-Baathification policy has been applied unevenly and unjustly," he said in a rare address to Iraqis on Friday, April 23.

Reports said that the U.S. occupation of Iraq has left Iraq ’s some 10 million Iraqis in both the private and public sectors jobless.

The fired chief army officers turned into sellers and drivers to make ends meet after the dissolution, which law experts along with human rights activists called unfair and illegal.