Six Iraqi vote winners barred for Ba’ath links

Six candidates who won at Iraq’s parliamentary election have lost their seats due to their links with executed dictator Saddam Hussein’s outlawed Ba’ath party.

The Justice and Accountability Committee (JAC) announced the decision on Monday, saying the six were among a group of more than 50 names initially nominated as parliamentary candidates earlier this month to replace those earlier barred by the body.

“On March 3, the election commission presented 54 names to replace those who had been banned” by the JAC for their alleged links to Saddam’s Baath Party, said JAC’s executive director Ali al-Lami.

“We informed the commission that 52 of those people fell under the committee’s responsibility and six of them won a seat in parliament,” the official added, stressing the committee now had “evidence and documents showing their affiliations and political responsibilities within the Ba’ath.”

Lami, however, declined to disclose the list which now goes before a three-member judicial panel who will decide whether or not members of the group will be barred.

The official said Iraqi parties could not replace their banned candidates and that the votes cast for them would be annulled.

One of the six barred candidates was Hamdi Naji of former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s Iraqiya bloc in Diyala and is currently being held by security forces over terror charges.

Iraqiya ended up the winner of the March 7 vote with 91 seats, two more than the State of Law Alliance of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

In January, about 500 candidates were barred from the polls by the Justice and Accountability Committee, established after Saddam’s fall in the wake of the 2003 occupation of Iraq by US-led forces to prevent Ba’athists from coming back to Iraq’s political scene.