Iraqi parliament passes long-awaited amnesty law

The Iraqi parliament on Thursday passed an amnesty draft law after long debate among the political blocs since the beginning of the current parliament's term in 2014, the Iraqi official television reported.

The parliament voted in the law with a majority of 234 lawmakers present in the 328-member parliament, the state-run Iraqiya channel said.

The long debate reflected the concerns of competing political parties in the Iraqi parliament, as some believe the draft law would lead to the release of terrorists or criminals, while others said that many prisoners, who were convicted over crimes and terror, were only confessed under torture, or were originally detained over false information by secret agents.

In the new law, the political blocs agreed on forming a judiciary panel to decide whether the convicts deserve a retrial for those prisoners who think they were jailed due to torture or false information

The Sunnis wanted the amnesty law as they accuse the Shiite-led government of marginalizing them and claim that its Shiite dominated security forces are indiscriminately arresting and torturing them as part of the sectarian strife that engulfed the country following the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

The al-Ahrar bloc, loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, has always been asking for an amnesty law in order to include prisoners from the Sadr followers, as they claim that Sadr followers were militants against the U.S. occupation.

The amnesty law was one of the main points of the political agreement brokered by the parliamentary political blocs in 2014, which led to the formation of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's government. Endit