Word: kassem
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Seven months ago, in the heady days after they had killed King Feisal and seized power in Baghdad, Major General Karim Kassem and Colonel Abdul Salam Mohammed Aref were "brothers in revolt" who slept on the floor of the same office in the Defense Ministry Building. Last week after a sort of show trial before a military court, Colonel Aref was sentenced to death for trying to kill his chief, Premier Kassem...
...fanatical Arab nationalist, Aref campaigned from the early days of the revolution for speedy union with Nasser's United Arab Republic. Kassem, a lean, brooding soldier with no political experience, wanted to keep Iraq independent of Cairo, and to fight off the Arab nationalist pressures made common cause with the Communists, who now control the street mobs of Baghdad. The two "brothers" fought, and Aref found himself accused of conspiring against the state and of trying to assassinate Kassem...
From the testimony broadcast on the Iraq radio and TV last week, Aref emerged as a conceited, emotional type, whom Nasser himself reportedly characterized as "a child." Nevertheless, there was no proof that he plotted against the state and, since Kassem himself refused to testify, there was also nothing but hearsay to contradict Aref's claim that when he drew a pistol in Kassem's presence last October he had only done so in a hysterical attempt to kill himself. Several leaders, including Brigadier Naji Talib, a top figure in the shadowy "free officers' group" that plotted...
When the Iraqi army killed King Feisal and seized power last July, General Karim Kassem threw his arms around his top lieutenant, Colonel Abdul Salem Mohammed Aref, and called him "my brother in revolt." Others, presumably including Aref himself, decided that the hot-eyed Aref might one day play Nasser to Kassem's Naguib. Last week a prosecutor at one of Baghdad's show trials revealed, almost in passing, that Aref has already been tried and convicted of treason...
Aref, a thrusting young Arab nationalist, fell because he tried to force Iraq into a quick union with Nasser's United Arab Republic. An Iraqi nationalist before all, Premier Kassem had tried to divest his friend by exiling him to the ambassadorship to West Germany. When Aref returned without permission at an awkward time, the Premier ordered his arrest. Kassem had decided personally, said the prosecutor, not to divulge "details" of Aref's trial, "in the interests of Arab solidarity." Nor was any sentence made public, though for treason there is usually only one punishment, and that quite...