Killers call the shots in Iraq's justice system

Nour al-Houda al-Maliki woke one night in March to the cracks of the bullets that killed her father as he lay sleeping, six feet from her. She saw four masked men. One she knew as a member of the Mahdi army, the feared clan that ruthlessly calls the shots throughout her south Baghdad neighborhood. Overcome by fear, the 21-year-old still managed to take her mother to the nearby Rashid police station the next day to report her father's murder and identify at least one killer. "They said to me, 'You mention the Mahdi army one more time and we will beat you, then jail you'," Nour, 21, recalled at the weekend. They were true to their word. She left prison 15 days ago and has been on the run since. "I'm scared," she said. "So scared, but who can I turn to?" Maliki is among tens of thousands of Iraqis for whom justice is a delusory buzz-word of a departing occupation. As the US prepares to withdraw its combat troops from most towns and villages by the middle of next year, the rule of law remains unenforceable throughout all layers of the nascent state it will leave behind. Even the judiciary cowers in fear from the criminals, or militants, who have held the country to ransom for at least three years. Many of the gunmen are filling the ranks of the so-called Sons of Iraq, the steadily growing movement credited with steadying Iraqi security. Among the Sons of Iraq rank and file are former al-Qaida insurgents who once used to be the US military's targets. At a Sons of Iraq pay day at the Hamani police station, north of Baghdad, Captain James Polak from the 2/14 Stryker Brigades was supervising the handover of responsibilities from his troops to local Iraqis. Asked how they decided which former insurgents were jailed and which were given salaries, he replied: "We have been told that anything that happened longer than four months ago is the cut-off." The upshot is that among Iraq's judges and victims, there is a growing sense that justice will never be served. "As judges, we are under the most critical of threats," said one Iraqi supreme court judge, who refused to be identified because of a terrorist attack on his home during the summer. On June 30, six senior judges were targeted by insurgents who planted explosives in their driveways or shot them on the way to court. The chief justice was assassinated at the steering wheel of his car. Three other judges were wounded. The judge who was attacked at home keeps a loaded pistol in his chambers these days and rarely dons the black robe that marks him as an arbiter of law. "We are always stressed and some of us are depressed," he said, sipping bitter coffee in his chambers inside a fortified compound in Baghdad. "We are consulting psychologists, who tell us to go often to wide open places, like lakes," he said, with incredulity. "We are working beyond our capabilities as human beings." At another safe compound downtown, one of Iraq's best-known lawyers also lamented his inability to do his job. "The justice system will have no role in the rebuilding of Iraq," he said. "The law system is supposed to be independent, but this is not true. Many practitioners are afraid and have been influenced by different groups in many different ways. A judge simply cannot use his skills to do what he is trained to do. He knows he is likely to pay with his life for trying." Avenging a wrong is a key tenet of social life in the Arab world, and reconciling the past is seen by the vast majority of Iraqi citizens as a prerequisite to moving forward. "But we are not looking like we are going to be able to do that," said a second senior judge, who was also unwilling to be identified. "If we don't have the past, we don't have the future." Amid growing resentment at the clean slates being thrown the way of some Sons of Iraq members, the US military yesterday said in a statement: "The prime minister's direction is that members of the Sons of Iraq will not be arrested until the warrant is reviewed by an independent joint legal advisory committee." This committee has been ordered to be formed by the country's national reconciliation committee. The committee, along with the subject matter, is a work in progress. But that is no comfort to Maliki. "I was jailed for eight months because they forced me to sign a confession that I helped kill my father for an inheritance," she said from her Baghdad hideout. "My mother was jailed for life. "When we went to the investigating judge, they asked me was there anything I wanted to change in my confession. I was too scared, but all I could think about was my brother hanging from the roof by his feet with the police beating him. "I don't know what my future is," she sobbed. "But if I go back to my neighborhood, or to the court, or to the police, they will kill me." Attacks on judges -June 27 2008: Chief Judge KamilAbdul Majeed was shot dead at traffic signals between court and his home. -June 30 2008: Five judges from Baghdad's criminal courts were targeted in a coordinated bombing campaign. -Sulaiman Abdullah: Hand grenade strapped to his front gate. Roadside bomb at front gate exploded later. -Qusai Ali Jasim: Bomb discovered and defused inside electricity box in his garage. Ali al-Alaak: Bomb exploded outside home. Ghanim al-Shammari: Bomb exploded outside home. Hassan Shwalah: Bomb placed outside his garage. All five survived.