Word: townes
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...example, and has taken a tough line on immigration. Even so, said Alkassar, the cdu has "some basic views that I consider my own." Those views are not precisely the Christian ones of the party's name - Alkassar, now a district councillor for the cdu in the small university town of Homburg, is a Muslim. But for Alkassar and many like him, identifying with a conservative Christian party is preferable to the secular alternative. "I believe in the importance of God and faith," he says. Such insistence that religion - any religion - should have a role in politics is echoing throughout...
When Ahmed Hassan Mohammed al-Dujaili took the stand as witness No. 1 in the trial of Saddam Hussein last December, he might have thought his worst nightmares were behind him. On a summer afternoon in 1982, two days after gunmen in his town opened fire on a presidential motorcade, Ahmed and all the other males in his family were rounded up by Saddam's Special Republican Guard. Ahmed and three of his 11 brothers were eventually released; the rest disappeared. Two years later, Saddam signed execution orders for six of Ahmed's brothers; a seventh died during interrogation. They...
...nephew Husam was killed while protecting Ali. When Ahmed's younger brother Jaafer came to collect Husam's body, a sniper lying in wait put several bullets in Jaafer's legs. Jaafer lived but will always walk with a severe limp. He is among the lucky ones. The town's mayor, Haji Mohammed Hassan al-Zubeidy, says some 180 people have been murdered in Dujail since Saddam's trial began in October 2005. Basam Ridha, adviser to the Prime Minister for the Saddam trial, puts the number closer to 200. About 80 more have vanished while traveling on the road...
Nowhere has the trial brought more misery than in Dujail, a town of 84,000, most of them Shi'ites, in the middle of the Sunni triangle. Since the start of Saddam's trial, Dujail has been infiltrated by ex-Baathist hit squads. Residents believe they have been ordered by Saddam's former henchmen to take out the families of witnesses. A number of insurgent cells operating around Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, a mere 45-minute drive north of Dujail, have targeted relatives of witnesses, most of whom rarely leave the Green Zone. Abu Hamid, commander of a nationalist...
...plight of the town reflects the broader collapse of order in the center of Iraq. Insurgents have destroyed the town's water and electricity facilities. Mayor al-Zubeidy says he needs at least 200 more people from the police or Iraqi National Guard to secure the entrances and exits of Dujail. He says he has been unable to persuade the Iraqi government to send reinforcements to the town. "We haven't gotten any support from any of the governments," he says. "There is almost a siege of Dujail, and we can't move out. If they catch...