U.S. Should Initiate Designation Process For Iraqi Parliament Member For Possible Terrorist Activities (updated 2/7)
By Andrew Cochran
Today we learn that a sitting member of the Iraqi Parliament, Jamal Jafaar Mohammed, might be a convicted and still-active terrorist. Mohammed was sentenced to death in Kuwait in 1984 for the bombings of the U.S. and French embassies there in 1983, in which 5 died and 86 were wounded. News reports also cite the U.S. military's assertions that Mohammed currently assists Iranian special forces in Iraq as "a conduit for weapons and political influence." Yet Mohammed now sits in Iraq's Parliament as a member of Prime Minister al-Maliki's ruling coalition. CNN reports that the U.S. Embassy there claims they are pursuing the case with the al-Maliki government.
The terrorist designation process in the U.S. government takes considerable research, discussion, and deliberation between numerous agencies before a final decision is reached (see these comments about the process by the senior Treasury official involved in designations). But if either the evidence underlying Kuwaiti conviction was accurate and not tainted by political or cultural bias, or if the current military intel on Mohammed's alleged Iranian ties is accurate, then Mohammed is a terrorist, should be so designated, and strong U.S. diplomatic and judicial measures should be pursued. The victims of the 1984 bombings deserve justice, and we cannot let the al-Maliki government just delay, deny, or obfuscate. Let the deliberations begin.
UPDATE, Feb. 7: Bill West sent me this link to a blog post on connections between al-Maliki's Dawa party and Hezbollah. "Maliki went to school with the Hezbollah leadership ... Hezbollah in mid 1980s worked to free 'the Dawa 17' -- arrested by Kuwait for a suicide bomb that killed three Americans in the US embassy in Kuwait."
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