Iraqi Lawmakers Approve Charter, Mourn Member

Iraq’s transitional National Assembly approved the final draft of the new constitution Sunday while mourning the death of an assassinated legislator.

A portrait and flowers were placed in the seat of Faris Nasir Hussein, whose car was ambushed Saturday night by gunmen north of Baghdad. A member of Iraq’s Shabak ethnic minority, Hussein was elected to parliament on the Kurdish ticket. He was on his way from his home in Mosul to attend Sunday’s assembly session when he was attacked. Three of his bodyguards also died in the assault, and fellow lawmaker Haidar Qassem was wounded.

Hussein’s death continued a wave of rebel violence that has killed more than 270 people in the last week. On Sunday, police discovered the corpses of 20 men in the Tigris River near Balad, 45 miles north of the capital.

Authorities said the men, dressed in civilian clothes, appeared to have been killed and dumped in the river two or three days earlier. Balad, a Shiite farming town near a large U.S. air base, is surrounded by Sunni Arab villages.

On Saturday, a U.S. soldier died when his patrol struck a roadside bomb near the western city of Al Asad, the military said.

In Baghdad, the National Assembly on Sunday held a brief memorial for Hussein prior to a formal reading of the final changes in the draft constitution. He was the third assembly member to be killed since the legislature convened in April.

“All members of the assembly and all government ministers are under threat.... We think about it every minute,” said legislator Hunain Qaddo, who was Hussein’s professor at Mosul University. “We ask for more protection and armored cars, or we will all be killed. The terrorists have good intelligence and are capable of knowing our movements.”

Assembly member Lamia Abed Khadouri Sakri was shot outside her home on the day of the legislature’s first session, and another lawmaker, Sheik Dhari Fayad, was killed in June when a car bomb struck his vehicle. In July, gunmen killed Mijbil Issa, a law professor working as an advisor to the constitution drafting committee.

Sakri and Fayad were Shiite Arabs, whereas Issa was a Sunni Arab and Hussein a Shabak -- a mostly Shiite minority centered around Mosul that distinguishes itself from Kurds and Arabs.

“This proves that the terrorists do not target a particular slate, but the political process as a whole,” Shiite assembly member Abbas Bayati said.

Sunday’s submission of the draft constitution to U.N. officials for printing finally takes the document out of the hands of negotiators. Millions of copies will be printed ahead of a referendum set for Oct. 15 in which Iraqis will vote on the charter.

The drafting process has endured multiple delays and some stretching of the rules that were supposed to govern the process -- most notably on Aug. 22, when negotiators submitted an incomplete draft to the assembly, then continued to alter and revise it for nearly a month.

One of those alterations has drawn criticism from local and international human rights organizations. The final draft eliminates a provision that stated, “All individuals have the right to enjoy the rights stated in international human rights agreements and treaties endorsed by Iraq that don’t run contrary to the principles and rules of this constitution.”

The sudden removal of that clause represents “a serious step backward,” Amnesty International said in a statement. The original text, the group said, “represented a real opportunity for Iraq to open a new chapter in human rights protection. It is one that must not be lost.”

With the referendum less than a month away, the assembly largely becomes a lame-duck body; preparing the constitution was its primary mission and it will dissolve within months regardless of whether the document passes. In either case, elections for a new national assembly are to be held before year’s end.

In other news Sunday, members of the Shiite Al Mahdi militia blockaded streets in the southern town of Basra, protesting the arrest of two of their leaders by British forces who patrol the city.

The militia -- loyal to cleric Muqtada Sadr, an outspoken foe of the U.S. occupation -- staged violent uprisings in Baghdad, Najaf and Basra last summer that ended with a cease-fire brokered by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq’s top Shiite cleric.

The militia was supposed to have disarmed, but its members have been accused of a campaign of attacks and assassinations in Basra targeting political rivals, coalition forces and former high-ranking members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party.

Khalil Maliki, a Sadr spokesman in Basra, issued a thinly veiled threat of further violence if the two detained men weren’t set free soon.

“We decided to give [the British] a period until we will react and they will face the Sadr people’s anger,” he said.

Times staff writers Borzou Daragahi and Shamil Aziz in Baghdad and special correspondent Othman Ghanim in Basra contributed to this report.