AMMAN, 4 May 2006 — The United Nations High Commission for Refugees is establishing contacts with the Syrian government to ensure refuge for 240 Palestinians who have been stranded in the no man’s land between Iraq and Jordan for several weeks, a UNHCR spokesperson said yesterday. “We try to get in close contact with them (Syrians)” over the issue, Michelle Alfaro, Protection Officer at the Iraq Operations Unit of the UNHCR office in Amman, told Arab News.

Alfaro welcomed as “good news” the fatwa (Islamic judgment) issued Monday by the top Iraqi Shiite religious leader Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, who considered the killing of Palestinians living in Iraq as a “taboo.” “We are happy with this fatwa and hope it will help alleviate the sufferings” of about 34,000 Palestinians living in Iraq, she said.

Al-Sistani seems to have stepped in amid reports that the Palestinians in Iraq were targeted by Shiite militiamen in retaliation for what they called as privileges the Palestinians enjoyed during the rule of the former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, including free housing and education.

The Palestinians arrived piecemeal in the no man’s land between Iraq and Jordan since mid-March, triggering concerns of a mass Palestinian exodus in search for safety. “We hope this is not the case,” Alfaro said apparently with Al-Sistani’s fatwa in mind.

Meanwhile, Jordan’s Bar Association on Tuesday rejected a request by the state security court to appoint a defense lawyer for an Iraqi woman and would-be suicide bomber in hotel attacks in the capital last year. “The responsibility of appointing a defense lawyer for the accused is yours and not ours,” Bar Association President Saleh Armuti said in letter to the head of the tribunal.

Armuti, who is also a member of the defense team of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, criticized the court for having failed to assign a lawyer from the onset of the case against Sajida Al-Rishawi. Rishawi is the only person standing trial for the Nov. 9 attacks that killed 60 people. Her trial opened on April 24 but the military tribunal adjourned the hearing in order to assign a defense attorney to Rishawi, whose husband blew himself up during a wedding party at one of the hotels.

Rishawi was arrested four days after the bombings and later confessed on state television how she tried but failed to activate an explosives belt at the Radisson SAS hotel where the party was in full swing.