1-08-07, 9:21 am

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said his government could review relations with any country which criticised the execution of ex-leader Saddam Hussein.   Al-Maliki is the deputy leader of the Shia Dawa Party. On September 11, 2006, Al-Maliki made his first official visit to neighbouring Shia-dominated Iran, whose influence on Iraq has become a very clear in the last couple of years.     The sectarian Dawa party was for many years based in Iran and is still funded and influenced by Iran. It is fed by the ideology of the late Ayatollah Khomeini and wants to establish an Iranian-style regime in Iraq.     Al-Maliki discussed with Iranian officials, including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with whom he wants closer relations. This is not surprising. Both men come out of the same Shia tradition and want a similar style of theocratic regime.   We see this in the way agents of al-Maliki’s Shia-dominated government have been instrumental in suppressing Sunni Arabs, women and minorities like Christians and homosexuals. His administration has protected the Badr and Sadr Shia death squads; refusing to disarm them and to bring the killers to justice.   Today, al-Maliki has revealed his true nature and agenda. A number of world leaders condemned al-Maliki’s government for hanging Saddam, saying it had come across as a sectarian lynching.   Al-Malaki responded by threatening to review relations with any country that criticises the shameful manner in which Saddam Hussein was executed.   We are now supposed to be a free and democratic Iraq. But freedom of speech does not exist when al-Maliki can make these threats.   Saddam was a dictator. It is good for the people of Iraq that he is no longer in power; although his removal by foreign invasion was not the right way to free Iraq and has caused immense suffering and misery. It has unleashed the Shia militias who have bought a reign of death to anyone who disagrees with their fundamentalist perversion of Islam.   The world needs to understand that no amount of western aid or tactful diplomacy will change is the mentality religious fanatics and their political allies like al-Maliki.   Al-Maliki appears to not accept that people have the right to criticise the fact and manner of Saddam’s execution, or to speak freely and openly about what they think of him and his government. This does not bode well for the future of democracy and human rights in Iraq.   From IRAQI LGBT