Blogger Khalid Jarrar, author of Secrets in Baghdad, remains in custody of the Iraqi intelligence service, known as the Mukhabarat.
As we reported yesterday, Khalid's brother Raed says their family was relieved to hear on Thursday morning that Khalid is still alive after going missing for two days. On Sunday, Khalid described on his blog how his apartment in Baghdad had been broken into and his hard drive was stolen. Soon after that he disappeared.
Khalid's family are calling for his release, or at very least that he be charged and tried for something. Raed says: “Our goal now is to ask the mokhabarat to take Khalid to court and reveal what exactly he is being charged with (if anything).”
The Committee to Protect Bloggers supports the Jarrar family's appeals.
Please show your support for the Khalid Jarrar by posting supportive comments at Raed's and Khalid's latest posts. If you're a blogger, please help spread the word by linking to them.
28 comments
“The irony is, given that you are SO law abiding… the irony is that you support an illegal war conducted by the US on Iraq. A war that has directly resulted in tens of thousands of Iraqis being massacred either directly by US troops, or indirectly via the tidal wave of crime and poverty unleashed by the invasion. Khalid is in the right here, not you” – Bruno
Bruno:
Since the topic is Khalid’s predicament, how do you interpret his written sentiments? Support for the new Iraqi regime and its security lifeline, the US, or support for the old guard and/or the insurgency?
On illegality: Self defense from impending harm is always legal. Saddam made himself to look as if he still had the WMD’s he never accounted for. One was VX nerve agent that Clinton had recently proved he was preparing with Al Qaeda. VX would be a very formiddable threat to the US if Al Qaeda deployed it in its subways.
UN Resolution 1441 certainly implied a US attack when it cited all Saddam’s continuing crimes and ended by threatening “serious consequences”. Unless you think they were talking about leagues of blue helmets showing up to disarm his huge armies and arsenals.
But when you have a now apparently corrupt Security Council and UN hierarchy, taking bribes from Saddam, the very party they were supposed to impartially administer justice to, it takes a perverse twist of logic to call it “illegal” for the US to read the UN’s previoulsy suggestive resolution for enforcement authority to its self defense interests, while also standing on a nation’s inalienable right to defend itself, as the UN Charter allows even without a more clearly stated resolution.
No doubt, US haters (like the Left) and Saddam apologists will seize on the corrupted ambiguity of the UN statement and ignore the democracy the US has since gifted to the Iraqi people, the costly rescue from Saddam who killed over 50 times more innocent people than the US-led overthrow brought about to innocent and guilty people alike, and the stop which was put to the Al Qaeda and other terrorist-feeding WMD activities of Saddam the UN could or chose never to get a handle on.
Whether all the missing WMD’s are ever accounted for or not, it still stands that when an outlaw, as Saddam indisputedly was, escapes his captive bonds, refuses further legal authority, refuses lawful compliance with unanimous world resolutions and is believed with very good cause to be armed, and refuses to show himself to be safe, he is to be shot down, under any civilized code of law in the world. But he now resides in a comfortable prison awaiting a fair trial. Meanwhile, his victims smolder in mass graves.
Lusiette:
You seem not completely sure of your charitable interpretations, just as I am not completely sure of my violence and revolution-inciting interpretations. So it woud seem we both agree to some ambiguity in how Mr. Jarrar allowed himself to being read.
But he is in a war zone. So is it illegitimate for the Iraqi national security apparatus to anticipate his words and blog to be a possibile source of recruiting more partricipants in their extremely lethal enemy’s efforts? I don’t think so.
Rufus: You are right to pick up on uncertainty here. Who knows, it may turn out to be our saving grace. But l don’t think it’s right to equate emotional power in writing with concrete action. Especially when we ourselves can’t be sure of the levels at which his irony is operating. For language to amount to incitement to violence/terror, it has to be the opposite of confusing. It has to say, with no room for doubt: “go and kill all life forms who have green skin and purple spots! they deserve to die!”. It can’t beat about the bush (no pun intended :). I think the mukhabarat were trying to put the frighteners on someone they think is too critical, not questioning him as part of a bona fide anti-terror operation. cheers, Luisetta.
Khalid has posted a long account of his time in jail. (July 30 is the date of the post.)
http://secretsinbaghdad.blogspot.com/2005/07/i-found-myself.html
Thanks Kathy. We posted it here: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/globalvoices/2005/08/01/iraq-i-found-myself/
I corresponded with Khalid a few years ago when the invasion first started. I am a professional single mother, middle of the road type, not politically involved – but I found Khalid to be very sweet, not “anti-American”, etc. Do you blame anyone at all for saying they are “anti-this or that” should that group be misbehaving? Khalid is NOT Anti-AMERICAN, he is very friendly and sincere. His whole family are very intelligent and loving people. Sure, they are afraid at times – not only of the American invasion, but of the Iraqi national guard. You really need to read the early blogs of Khalid and him family to “get to know him” before taking one comment about being “Anti….” to put that in the right perspective. I sort of think of Khalid as my “Iraqi son” because he is same age and mindset of my own son here in the USA. I always worry about him and his family, in particular. It’s good to know, more personally, the people who we are “protecting” with our blood and money without jumping to conclusions as we too often tend to do.
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