BASRA, Sept 24: An Iraqi judge has issued arrest warrants for two British soldiers freed after a British raid in Basra, an Iraqi lawyer said on Saturday, 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 al Sabti, the head of the lawyers’ syndicate in Basra said.
Britain’s Secretary of State for Defence John Reid said the defence ministry had not received any arrest warrant for British soldiers in Iraq, adding that in any case the warrants would have no legal basis.
“Iraqi law is very clear. British personnel are immune from Iraqi legal process. They remain subject to British law,” he said in a statement.
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 armoured vehicle.
Later British forces returned and armoured vehicles broke down the walls of the jail. The two were 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.
Two investigations into the events leading up to the rescue are under way by Iraqi authorities and the British military.
Iraqi police said US troops killed a family of four in Kerbala, south of Baghdad, on Saturday, 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.
RALLY FOR CONSTITUTION: Basra is the largest city in the Shia-dominated southern Iraq, and thousands of citizens rallied on Saturday in support of a proposed new Iraqi constitution which many Shias hope will boost their status in the fragmented country.
The rally followed calls last week by Iraq’s most senior Shia authority, Ayatollah Ali al Sistani, to vote in favour of the charter, which will be put to a referendum on Oct 15.
Iraq’s US-backed government is dominated by Shias and Kurds — to the dismay of Sunnis.
Many Sunnis fear if the constitution is approved at the referendum, it will formalize their reduced role by giving Shias broad autonomy in line with that already enjoyed by Kurds — including control over oil revenues.
SUICIDE ATTACK: On Saturday morning, a suicide car bomb exploded near an Iraqi army checkpoint in Baghdad, killing two Iraqi soldiers and wounding five other people, police said.
The attack, near a restaurant in the capital’s Karrada district, destroyed several cars and sent up a plume of smoke.
Three soldiers and two civilians were wounded, police said. Iraqi police and the US military sealed off the area.
Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack, saying 11 people had died in the blast.
“One of your dear brothers ... today blew himself up in a car near a group of infidels from the army, near Karrada in Baghdad, which destroyed two cars, and killed more than 11 infidels.”
Separately, a US soldier was killed by a roadside bomb southeast of Baghdad, the US military said on Saturday.
The death raises to 1,911 the number of US troops to have died in Iraq since the start of the invasion. —Reuters