Jubilee Iraq updates us with new info on UNCC overcharging and a lack of compensation for Iraq victims.

Iraq says Volker investigation is uncovering “gross mismanagement” in UNCC

In January UN internal audits revealed that the UNCC may have overstated reparation awards by $5bn. Today Iraq’s Deputy UN ambassador Fesial al-Istrabadi told the AP that the the Volker Investigation into Oil-For-Food believes that some of the allegations were legitimate, particularly in how the commission handled currency exchange rates with the Iraqi dinar. “There appear to have been some irregularities that are at the very least gross mismanagement at the level of currency exchange.” The executive director of the investigation, Reid Morden, refused to confirm al-Istrabadi’s claim but said investigators had long wanted to scrutinize the U.N. Compensation Commission: “It’s a program which so far has submitted itself to very little in the way of transparency.”

The following Seattle Times article features Bert Sacks who traveled with Voices in the Wilderness to Iraq. It is a good overview of the court case. Following the article is a Letter to the Editor by Sacks correcting “one important error in the story.”

Sunday, July 12, 2005
Seattle Times
Local B5
BY MARCEL HONORE

Medill News Service

WASHINGTON - Whether at home in Washington state or away in Washington, D.C., Bert Sacks can’t seem to get the federal government to see things his way.

Sacks, an outspoken Seattle antiwar activist, took nine trips to deliver medicine to Iraqi children between 1996 and 2002 in defiance of U.N. sanctions. Last week, he faced new legal hurdles from the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC), the Treasury Department agency that enforces economic and trade sanctions.

Latest Update on the case of Pere Jean-Juste, now incarcerated in the National Penitentiary, in Haiti July 24, 2005

July 24th

by Bill Quigley

“My body is in prison, but my soul is free.”
Fr. Gerard Jean-Juste from prison

Fr. Gerard Jean-Juste is being held in isolation in the Haitian National Penitentiary. I tried twice to visit but was not allowed. Likewise his Bishop tried to visit him but was not allowed. I was able to deliver his prayer book and some clothes and send a note in to him. He sent a note back that included the following:

“Avoka Bill, Thanks a lot to everyone for everything. I am in isolation section room I-05. I am really isolated but not from God. In spirit I remain together with you all. Keep the food program running. Justice shall prevail.
God’s blessings,
GJJ.”

The newest reported charges against Fr. Gerry are “public denunciation” and “inciting to violence.” The second charge is the same one that the unelected government has had pending against the former prime minister of Haiti, Yvon Neptune, who has been in prison for over a year with no trial in sight. These charges are as groundless as the prior ones - but are still not in writing and will probably change again.

Voices in the Wilderness-NYC Moves to Bring Attention to Iraq’s Water Crisis

by Anna J. Brown, Voices in the Wilderness-NYC

In the “Bechtel’s Dry Run: Iraqis Suffer Water Crisis (2004)” report published by Public Citizen’s Water for All Campaign, its North American reader meets Ahmed Abdul Rida, a resident of Baghdad’s Sadr City. Mr. Rida, whose family members join a million others in dire poverty, is waiting for the two to three hours of electricity available per day to be activated so that he may use his family’s water pump. Since the water that he is able to pump is derived from the polluted waters of the Tigris River, what he and his family end up drinking is described as a “concentrated cocktail of pesticides, fertilizers, heavy metals from antiquated piping, and unknown amounts of depleted uranium, raw sewage and other chemicals from American and Iraqi munitions from the 1991 Gulf war, and the more recent Anglo-American invasion.” [1]

The story of Mr. Rida has been quite present to me during the month of July as I join friends and comrades in the WATER NOT WAR effort sponsored by Voices in the Wilderness of New York City. [2] When I ride the subway to each of our Wednesday and Saturday demonstrations, I meditate on the plight of the Rida family: What is it like to offer your young son or daughter a glass of brown colored and foul smelling water? What is it like to hand your elderly mother or pregnant wife a drink that may cause diarrhea, kidney stones, cholera and that damages the liver and brain? When I imagine the desperate thirst that wells up in a land where summer temperatures routinely top 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the necessity and the urgency of awareness about this devastating water crisis in Iraq brings to mind this insight of Dr. Martin Luther King’s: “We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be unless you are what you ought to be.” [3]

This latest Iraq Health and Infrastructure Digest is a compilation of 9 articles covering a wide range of issues facing people in Iraq. Summaries are given as well as the full, or relevant portion of the articles.

Digest by David Smith-Ferri, Voices in the Wilderness