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Supreme Court to Hear U.S. Citizens Held in Iraq
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to intervene in the cases of two naturalized U.S. citizens who want to stop American forces in Baghdad from turning them over to Iraqi authorities.

Mohammad Munaf faces a death sentence after a judge in the Central Criminal Court of Iraq found him guilty of kidnapping Romanian citizens. Munaf says he is innocent. In the other case, Shawqi Omar was alleged to be harboring an Iraqi insurgent and four Jordanian Jihadist fighters when his Baghdad home was raided in 2004. He faces a trial in Iraqi courts and also proclaims his innocence. The raid by multinational forces targeted associates of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, at the time the al-Qaida leader in Iraq.

In the cases of Munaf and Omar, different U.S. courts gave conflicting interpretations of a 1948 ruling by the Supreme Court. The lower U.S. courts ruled against Munaf, but in favor of Omar.

Munaf was born in Baghdad and was working as a translator and guide for three Romanian journalists abducted in 2005 in Iraq and held for 55 days. Troops from the multinational force, of which U.S. troops are a part, freed the captives. The multinational troops detained Munaf because they suspected he was involved in the kidnapping.
He'll get as much sympathy as the orphan who murdered his parents.
Munaf spent 10 years in the U.S., moving to Bucharest, Romania, in 2001. His wife is Romanian. Munaf is in U.S. custody at Camp Cropper near Baghdad International Airport, where the multinational force is holding him on behalf of the Iraqi government pending resolution of his appeal in the Iraqi courts.

A federal court in Washington, D.C., rejected a request by Munaf's sister seeking to bar his transfer to the Iraqis. The federal judge said Munaf is not in the custody of the United States, but is instead in the hands of coalition troops, of which U.S. forces are a part. The coalition troops, the federal court said, are answerable to the United Nations and its member countries. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the ruling.

The U.S. courts in Munaf's case relied on a 1948 Supreme Court decision in which Japanese citizens unsuccessfully sought to challenge their sentences by a military tribunal in Japan. The justices said the tribunal's authority came from Allied forces and not the United States. The Supreme Court said federal courts had no jurisdiction because the military panel was not a U.S. tribunal, thought it had been set up by General Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur, the Supreme Court ruled, did so while acting as head of the Allied forces.

In the case of Omar, his lawyers say he traveled to Iraq with his 10-year-old son after the fall of Baghdad in 2003 seeking contract work in reconstruction. In the custody of the U.S. military ever since the raid, Omar's wife got a federal judge in Washington, D.C., to block the multinational force from turning him over to Iraqi authorities for prosecution. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected the U.S. government's assertion that the 1948 Supreme Court ruling meant that federal courts had no authority to decide Omar's case. The appeals court said that Omar, unlike the Japanese nationals in the 1948 Supreme Court case, has not been charged with a crime much less convicted of one and that he has remained in the control of U.S. forces.
Except that he is being charged with a crime: harboring insurgents in his home. He's being charged in the Iraqi courts. Our duty is to turn him over to be tried unless the current status agreement prevents that.

Posted by: Steve White 2007-12-08
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=212021