IRAQ: NEW CONSTITUTION PREVENTS CITIZENSHIP FOR JEWS, SAYS MP

IRAQ: NEW CONSTITUTION PREVENTS CITIZENSHIP FOR JEWS, SAYS MP:

"Baghdad, 27 July (AKI) - The first draft of the new Iraqi constitution will prevent Iraqi Jews, stripped of their nationality in the 1940s and 1950s, from re-obtaining it, Mundhir al-Fadl, an Iraqi MP and member of the constituent assembly's constitution commisssion, has told Adnkronos International (AKI). Al-Fadl, one of the commision members responsible for drafting the constitution's chapter on 'rights and duties' explained that one paragraph of the draft says that 'the Iraqi nationality is a right acquired by every Iraqi, which cannot be withheld for any reason and is the basis of his citizenship.'

'All those who have been deprived of their citizenship after 8 February 1963 have the right to recover it, as they have the right to multiple nationality,' the draft continues.

However, the parliamentarian, who is part of the Kurdish list, pointed out that this rules out Iraq's Jews, who were forced to emigrate from the country before 8 February 1963, the date of the coup carried out by the Baath party, who overthrew the country's then ruler, Brig Abd-al-Karim Qasim, who had taken power in a military coup almost five years earlier.

'I believe that every Iraqi citizen deprived of their nationality for any reason, political, ethnic or religious, has the right to recover it,' al-Fadl told AKI."