"Now the U.S. military is assassinating Iraqi peace workers"

By Kathlyn Stone

Murder of Iraq Freedom Congress leader is a blow to labor and peace activists around the world

At 3 a.m. on the 4th of July, U.S. military forces and Iraqi national guards opened fire with a barrage of bullets and grenades on the Baghdad home of Abdel-Hussein Saddam. The severely wounded Abdel-Hussein was taken away and his 18-year-old daughter was left alone, injured and bleeding on the floor.

Abdel-Hussein’s beaten body turned up at the Yarmouk Hospital morgue on July 6. The murder of Abdel-Hussein was the most devastating of four attacks by the U.S. military on the Iraq Freedom Congress in the past 10 months. The IFC is an organization comprised primarily of trade unionists, community leaders, and women’s and children’s rights workers who are determined to look after their own. IFC’s goals are to salvage the lives of as many Iraqis as possible, and to end the occupation and sectarian fighting. Its slogan: "No Shiite… No Sunni… Ours is Human Identity.”

The IFC has 22 offices or “wards” in Iraq cities and neighborhoods. It establishes where and when it is invited by local community leaders. Since 2005 the IFC has been working toward a progressive democratic non-sectarian government in Iraq. It is as critical of the violent political Islamic forces as of the violent U.S. occupiers.

Abdel-Hussein, 50, was born in Basra, and was a resident of Baghdad’s Alattiba neighborhood at the time of his death. He was the head of the IFC’s Safety Force, an organization of men who volunteer to protect and defend both Sunni and Shiite citizens from sectarian gangs. He spent two years of his life in jail in the 1990s for opposing the Saddam Hussein regime. “Throughout the period of his leadership of the Safety Force, there had been no killing based on identity in the area where he lived and in other areas with the presence of the Safety Force,” the IFC said in a written statement.

An IFC spokesman says the “cowardly” attack is part of Bush’s surge which is aimed at suppressing Iraqi political opponents. It could be, too, that IFC’s growing influence as a protector and unifier within Iraq’s pulverized society is seen as a threat to U.S. government objectives. A peaceful sovereign Iraq will not turn over its rich oil reserves to foreign invaders...

“The assassination of Abdel Saddam Hussein by US forces mafia will not discourage the determination of the Iraq Freedom Congress and will be a new impetus to continue the struggle to rid the Iraqi society from all types of terrorists. They murdered Abdelhussein, but his spirit, ambitious aspirations, and bravery for building Iraq that is secular, humanitarian, and free from occupation and sectarian gangs, will be firmly in the hearts of freedom lovers.”

-- From a statement by the Iraq Freedom Congress on the death of Abdel-Hussein Saddam, leader of the IFC Safety Force, July 8, 2007