First Prosecution Witnesses Appear in Kuwait Trials

A Kuwaiti military tribunal resumed trials Saturday for 24 people accused of working for an Iraqi-run newspaper, and the prosecution for the first time produced witnesses to bolster its case.

Among the 24 defendants is a Kuwaiti journalist, Ibtissam Dekhil, accused of writing columns supporting the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait and attempting to recruit her colleagues to work for the Iraqi-controlled Al Nidaa newspaper.

Testifying against her were three other Kuwaiti journalists. They said reporters and editors from Kuwait’s other newspapers held a meeting three days after the Aug. 2, 1990, Iraqi invasion and resolved to close their newspapers rather than collaborate.

Several said that they advised Dekhil against accepting the job but that she ignored the advice.

“She said, ‘Look, we have to be realistic. We’re Iraqis now, and we have to do this,’ ” said Husain Abdul Rahman, formerly an editor at Al Qabas, one of Kuwait’s larger newspapers.

The prosecution contended that Dekhil wrote her columns under the pen name Nidaa Salman. Dekhil maintained that Nidaa Salman was an Iraqi woman who fled to Baghdad and that she was forced to work at the newspaper.

Rahman, however, testified that he recognized Dekhil’s writing style and that he was told by a second journalist that she penned the articles.

Another journalist testified that he was working as a supermarket cashier in November when Dekhil came in to by some items. She was accompanied by two or three Iraqi men who carried guns under their clothes, he said.

“As she was paying she said, ‘Why don’t you come work for Nidaa?’ and I said, ‘Sorry,’ ” he said. A few days later Iraqi soldiers came to his house, asked him whether he was a reporter and then arrested him. He testified that he was taken to Basra, Iraq, and given a death sentence for refusing to cooperate but was released 17 days later.

The five-judge panel is expected to issue its verdicts next week. If convicted, all the defendants could be sentenced to death.

The 24--all but Dekhil non-Kuwaitis--had come before the court May 21, two days after the same judges sentenced an Iraqi man who had worn a Saddam Hussein T-shirt to 15 years in prison. Officials said he was a collaborator and a longtime Iraqi spy. After an international outcry about the fairness of the proceedings, the Al Nidaa case was postponed to give defense attorneys time to prepare their cases.

Al Nidaa’s Lebanese editor fled the country and is being tried in absentia. Other defendants have maintained either that they were forced to work at the newspaper or that they held only menial jobs as plumbers, electricians, secretaries and janitors.