Iraq election officials bar 500 candidates from poll

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Iraqs election organisers on Thursday barred nearly 500 politicians and parties from contesting the countrys upcoming national poll, including many linked to Saddam Husseins outlawed Baath party.
We decided this afternoon to exclude around 500 names and political entities from the list of candidates, said Hamdia Husseini, a senior official with the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC).
Husseini did not specifically mention the Baath party, but said the excluded candidates fell under the law of the committee of justice and integrity which bars Saddam loyalists from taking part in elections.
She said those who had been barred had three days to appeal the decision, during which time they could also present an alternative list of names to contest the poll.
Among the most prominent to be banned was Saleh al-Mutlak, a secular Sunni lawmaker who heads the National Dialogue Front.
Mahmud Othman, an independent Kurdish MP, said that decision would harm efforts towards national reconciliation, seen as key to reducing instability in a country that was engulfed in sectarian bloodshed in 2006 and 2007.
Baath party membership was a key condition for advancement in public sector employment during Saddams regime.
Meanwhile, an Iraqi court Thursday sentenced to death 11 men, including Al-Qaeda militants, over devastating truck bombs in Baghdad that killed more than 100 people in August and dealt a harsh blow to the government.
The trial was the first to convict suspects arrested in the wake of three major attacks in the second half of 2009 that saw insurgents defy the war-torn countrys fledgling security forces and penetrate the heart of the capital.
They are sentenced to death for the crime they planned, Ali Abdul Sattar, president of the criminal court, said at a hearing in the Iraqi capital.
The August 19 attacks just minutes apart outside the ministries of finance and foreign affairs caused massive destruction, killed 106 people and wounded around 600 others.
Those convicted included Salim Abed Jassim who confessed that he received funding for the attacks from Brigadier General Nabil Abdul Rahman, a senior army officer during the rule of Saddam Hussein now living in Syria.
Also sentenced to death by hanging were Ishaq Mohammed Abbas, an Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader and his brother Mustapha, the court official told AFP.
Both men had once been detained but were later released from Camp Bucca, a now closed US-run prison in the southern city of Basra.
These men were the brains behind the attacks in August, a security official involved in an investigation into the August 19 attacks told AFP on condition of anonymity.