We are herewith publishing a Parliamentary Enquiry to the Italian Ministry of External Affairs on the question of political prisoners in Iraq and Jabbar Al-Kubaysi in particular. The enquiry was presented by Mauro Bulgarelli, deputate of the "Verdi", Italy´s green party.

Enquiry for written response 4-12112
Presented by Mauro Bugarelli, Thusday, 17th of december 2004
Parliamentary session no. 562

To the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Given the following information:

various international humanitarian organisations, including Amnesty International and the International Red Cross, have been denouncing for some time now, that in Iraq there are detained tens of thousands, often in inhuman conditions, often women or youth of very young age, under the accuse of being part of the Iraqi resistance; of around 10.000 of these detainees every trace is lost, they are therefore to be considered as disappeared persons;

one of these is Jabbar al-Kubaisi, leader of the Iraqi Patriotic Alliance, arrested by US-troops on the 3rd of September, and from this date onwards he has effectively disappeared, as no information about his whereabouts, or legal status can be received, not even by the International Red Cross;

given this information and knowing that our country is part of the coalition of occupying forces, we want to know whether the Minister of Foreign Affairs considers it to his duty to take contact with the allied forces to verify if it is true that thousands of Iraqi citizens have effectively "disappeared", because it is not known why and where they are arrested;

furthermore we want to know from the autorities whether Jabbar al-Kubaisi was indeed arrested by the US-military and which motives have made it impossible to give informations about the place of detention. (4-12112)