BASRA, Iraq, 25 September 2005 — An Iraqi judge has issued arrest warrants for two British soldiers freed after a British raid in Basra, an Iraqi lawyer said yesterday, and thousands rallied in the southern city in support of a new constitution. Judge Raghib Hassan issued the warrants on Thursday, accusing the men of killing an Iraqi policeman and wounding another, carrying unlicensed weapons and holding false identification, Kassim Sabti, the head of the lawyers’ syndicate in Basra told Reuters.
Britain’s Ministry of Defense said yesterday it had not received any arrest warrants for the soldiers in Basra, adding that in any case the warrants would have no legal basis. “All British troops in Iraq come under the jurisdiction of Britain,” a defense spokesman said in London. The whereabouts of the two soldiers was not clear. British forces mounted a bid to free the two soldiers on Monday, but were initially repelled as a crowd of angry Iraqis petrol-bombed an armored vehicle.
Later, British forces returned and armored vehicles broke down the walls of the jail. The two were later freed from a private house nearby, where they were believed to have been held by a local militia. Basra authorities said British troops killed two Iraqi police during the raid. Monday’s flare-up has harmed the relationship British forces were able to build with local Iraqis in and around Basra, a relatively stable city compared with other parts of Iraq.
Basra’s governing council has suspended all cooperation with the British until they apologize, guarantee that similar actions do not recur and provide compensation for damage inflicted.
Iraqi police said US troops killed a family of four in Kerbala, south of Baghdad, yesterday, reflecting military nerves on edge across the country. Police said the family’s passenger car apparently got too close to a US convoy, which opened fire, killing a father and mother and their 13-year-old son and nine-year-old daughter.
Basra is the largest city in majority-Shiite southern Iraq, and thousands of citizens rallied yesterday in support of a proposed new Iraqi constitution which many Shiites hope will boost their status in the fragmented country. The rally followed calls last week by Iraq’s most senior Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, to vote in favor of the charter, which will be put to a referendum on Oct 15.
Iraq’s US-backed government is dominated by southern Shiites and Kurds from the north — to the dismay of the minority Sunni Arabs, who make up just 20 percent of the population but have dominated Iraq for decades.
