Iraqi women face execution for supporting resistance

Three Iraqi women aged 25-31 face execution after being sentenced to death by the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Court for involvement in resistance to the US-led occupation of Iraq. Wassan Talib, Zainab Fadhil and Liqa Omar Muhammad denied the charges. A statement by the World Tribunal on Iraq and the Brussels Tribunal Executive Committee opposing the execution noted: "The United States and its local conspirators, in creating hundreds of thousands of widows and reducing life in Iraq to a struggle for bare survival have placed women in the crosshairs and now on the gallows." Arguing that the women should not have been charged at all, the groups cited a 1982 UN General Assembly resolution affirming "the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle".

From GLW issue 701