Evidence against barred Iraq candidates to be released

Evidence that led to candidates being barred from Iraq's March 7 election for suspected links to Saddam Hussein will be released in the coming days, the head of the committee that disqualified them told AFP yesterday.

Ali al-Lami said the evidence was being organised by the Justice and Accountability Committee (JAC) so that it could be presented to the media before the parliamentary election takes place on Sunday.

"We have already decided to release these documents this week," he said in an interview in Baghdad. "The most important thing is to release the information before the election."

Asked to provide a specific day when the documents would be made public, Lami declined to give details.

"Announcing the release of these documents needs a press conference," he said.

"The press conference requires some preparation. Showing these documents to the media also needs some preparation to collect all the documents, to print them, etc."

Asked why preparations were taking time, Lami replied: "Why do you want everything to go so fast? We haven't completed our preparations, we need time. We are also having some problems with the candidate Saleh al-Mutlak."

Mutlak, head of leading Sunni Arab grouping the National Dialogue Front, was the most high-profile candidate barred from the election for alleged ties to Saddam's now outlawed Baath Party.

Mutlak insists that he was kicked out of the Baath party in 1977, two years before Saddam became president, because he opposed its policies.