Word: kassem
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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When he needed help to consolidate his coup d'état last year, Iraq's Premier Karim Kassem trustingly relied on the local Communists. Soon they controlled the press, the state radio and government censorship, key propaganda posts where they set to work creating the legend of the revolutionary hero, the Sole Leader. Friends tried to warn the Sole Leader that he was being had, but it took the shocking evidence of the Red-led killing and burning at Kirkuk (TIME, Aug. 3) and Mosul to convince Kassem that the Communists were out to divide, not to unite...
Last week Kassem announced that a court would try the "anarchists" responsible for the Kirkuk "massacre" of at least 120 persons. Sixty members of the Communist-infiltrated Popular Resistance Force were haled before a court-martial on charges of murdering three Baghdad notables-the first proCommunists to stand trial in Iraq since the revolution of July...
...held up a gory picture of a Turcoman woman, demanded: "What right did they have to kill this woman? Is that what the granting of rights to women means?" Almost absently, Kassem continued: "Look at these savage acts. Do they not discredit freedom and democracy? What have you done? These pictures cause pain. Look at the poor people being dragged in the streets." Composing himself, Kassem said: "Rest assured that this will not happen again. There is force ready to destroy anyone attempting...
...said had been seized during a recent raid on the Communist-dominated Student Union. The maps divided Baghdad into sectors "for the purpose of dragging through the streets the sons of the people. The students marked some of the houses 'suspect' and others 'for dragging.' " Kassem's wrath next turned to the Red-dominated Iraqi trade unions, which he accused of engaging too heavily in politics. Almost as a footnote, he referred to another riotous occasion-the Mosul uprising last March in which a notorious Communist lawyer "buried 17 persons alive...
After this long and emotional indictment, Kassem wound up the press conference by saying that military press censorship would be lifted for one day so that Baghdad papers could report the press conference as they wished. He would be interested to see what would appear. With that, Kassem, without a smile, departed. As usual, crowds on Rashid Street dogtrotted beside his familiar Chevrolet station wagon, cheering, applauding and chanting praiseful slogans. But this time they were rewarded by neither a grin nor a wave...