Kuwait Sentences 6 Journalists to Death for Working on Pro-Iraqi Newspaper : Persian Gulf: 8 defendants are acquitted by military tribunal while 10 others are given 10-year sentences.

Six journalists and editors were sentenced to death Saturday for working at a pro-Iraqi newspaper during the occupation of Kuwait.

Eight defendants were acquitted, including a plumber and a janitor who claimed he only swept the floor of the Al Nidaa newspaper. Ten others, mainly secretaries and clerical workers who could have faced the death penalty, were given 10-year prison terms, to be followed by deportation.

Only one of the 24 defendants was Kuwaiti. The others included Iraqis, Jordanians, Palestinians, Lebanese and stateless Arabs known as bidoun.

Saturday’s sentencing came four days after Amnesty International denounced torture and other human rights abuses of suspected wartime collaborators, urging the Kuwaiti government to halt the martial-law trials until defendants could be assured fair treatment.

As the five-judge military tribunal read the verdicts, pandemonium erupted in the ornate mosaic-and-marble courtroom. The sister of one man sentenced to 10 years for working as a proofreader collapsed on the floor, while his fiancee wept hysterically and screamed that the judgment was unfair.

Soldiers shouted for order and waved their machine guns, one of which was painted with pink Arabic graffiti that said, “Kuwait Is Free.” One guard used a raised machine gun to push a wailing veiled woman out the courtroom doors.

“Ten years? Ten years for what?” cried the sister of a Jordanian woman convicted of working as a secretary for Iraq’s deputy minister of information in Kuwait. “She didn’t do anything to deserve 10 years.”

Journalist Ibtissam Dekhil, a 35-year-old widow with four children, became the first Kuwaiti to be sentenced to death for collaboration. She was convicted after three former colleagues testified that she went to work for Al Nidaa (the Call) against their advice, knowing that other Kuwaiti journalists had refused to assist Iraqi propaganda.

“She said, ‘Look, we have to be realistic. We’re Iraqis now and we have to do this,’ ” her former editor, Husain Abdul Rahman, testified last month.

Dekhil was accused of aiding Iraqi intelligence, attempting to recruit other journalists to work at Al Nidaa and writing a pro-Iraqi column under the pen name Nidaa Salman. She claimed that she was forced to work at the newspaper and that the columns were actually written by an Iraqi woman who fled to Baghdad before a U.S.-led coalition liberated Kuwait.

The Al Nidaa defendants were arrested because their names appeared on a list left behind by the Iraqis. All had pleaded innocent, claiming they had never actually worked at the newspaper, had held menial jobs or were forced to cooperate, facing deportation to Baghdad or worse.

Except for the case against Dekhil, much of the evidence against them came from a police informer, according to Police Capt. Abudullah Treiji, who testified in court but refused to identify his secret source. Defense attorneys complained bitterly about “ghost witnesses,” but the judges declined to order Treiji to produce his witness in open court.

“I can’t take it. I can’t take it,” one attorney moaned Saturday.

“The real criminal in this case is the secret source,” he said. “He’s invisible. We didn’t see him, we didn’t speak to him, we didn’t touch him. I can’t believe in him.”

Al Nidaa was the only newspaper permitted to publish in Kuwait during the seven-month occupation. It declared Kuwait to be Iraq’s 19th province, ran front-page color photographs of Saddam Hussein and printed scathing tales of sexual and financial peccadilloes by Kuwait’s emir and his government.

The paper’s Lebanese editor, Ahmed Fouad Hussaini, who is believed to have fled to Cairo, was convicted Saturday and sentenced to death in absentia. A Justice Ministry official said Kuwait would seek his extradition from Egypt.

Also sentenced to death were Fuwwaz Bassasow, a Palestinian who admitted working as a copy editor; Osamu Sehail Hussein, a Jordanian editor accused of being responsible for running the numerous photographs of Saddam Hussein; and Abdulrahman Husseini and Ahmed Eid Mustafa, both Jordanians convicted of playing key roles in producing the newspaper.

“They wanted to sap the mental spirit of the Kuwaitis and scare the people and intended to harm the Kuwaiti national interest,” the court concluded in a decision signed by presiding Judge Mohammed Jasem bin Naji. “And they were happy to do this.”

The court rejected arguments that the defendants, including an Iraqi woman who received a written order to report to work at Al Nidaa, had been coerced.

“Many Kuwaiti citizens did not work with the Iraqis, refused orders, and many other residents refused Iraqi orders and did not work, and nothing happened to them,” the presiding judge wrote.

Kuwait has been holding martial-law trials since May 25 for an estimated 600 people accused as spies, informers, looters, rapists and others believed to have cooperated with the Iraqi occupation forces. Scores have been given sentences ranging from deportation to 15 years in prison. Two women and five men have been sentenced to hang, and two more were given death sentences in absentia.

The trials drew international criticism after an Iraqi whose only stated crime was wearing a Saddam Hussein T-shirt was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Kuwaiti authorities later said they had evidence--not disclosed in court--that the man was a member of Iraq’s Arab Baath Socialist Party and a longtime spy.

Human rights groups and defense lawyers have criticized the martial-law proceedings, saying that although defendants now have lawyers, they have scant opportunity to cross-examine the witnesses against them or gain access to prosecution evidence that would help present a meaningful defense.

In a separate case Saturday, the judges sentenced a former Kuwaiti police sergeant to death in absentia. Farhan Majid Khalaf, a bidoun, was convicted of fighting against Kuwait in Iraq’s Popular Army.

Under martial law, defendants have no right to appeal. But all sentences will be reviewed by a judicial panel created by Kuwait’s crown prince, Sheik Saad al Abdullah al Sabah. Defendants can also plead for mercy to the emir.