This post has been corrected. See the note at the bottom for details.

Bahrain lifted its emergency law Wednesday, almost three months after it called in Saudi troops to crush a largely peaceful protest movement popular among the island’s Shiite population.

What that means, though, is anyone’s guess, as many suspected demonstrators remain in jail and even in the final hours of emergency law, one of the country’s leading human rights activists was summoned to a military court.

Protests were planned for Wednesday by rights groups. It remained an open question whether the government would tolerate them.

King Hamed ibn Isa Khalifa on Tuesday gave a speech calling for negotiations with the opposition in Bahrain at the start of July. But hours after he spoke, leading rights activist Nabeel Rajab was summoned to court by the military authorities.

"The military prosecutor summoned the president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, Mr. Nabeel Rajab, to appear before the court today at 6 in the evening, and the summon was conveyed to Mr. Rajab at 4 in the afternoon the same day," his organization said in a statement. "Mr. Nabeel Rajab proceeded to go to the center where he was summoned accompanied by his lawyer, but has since been missing in action and has not made any contact up until the writing of this appeal."

For the record, 2:06 p.m., June 1: An earlier version of this post misspelled the name of Bahrain's king as Hamead ibn Isa Khalifa. It is Hamed ibn Isa Khalifa.

-- Ned Parker in Baghdad

 

President Obama's speech on Mideast policy was greeted mostly with derision Thursday in Sahara, a Baghdad cafe where people drink coffee and smoke flavored tobacco in water pipes. Many in the audience mocked the U.S. president's words.

"America is like a theater. They all wear different faces, but eventually they are following the same scheme and policy," said Ahmed Qoraishi, 23, a university art student. "Don't tell me the 'Arab Spring' is due to his efforts. On the contrary, I can tell that, deep inside, the Americans prefer a dictator here or there if they take care of the American national interests."

Other cafe patrons expressed similar vitriol for Obama and the United States: "Obama's speech is like a joke for me," said Numan Qadis, 47, as he smoked his water pipe. He mocked Obama's calls for Israel to give up land in the Palestinian territories based on the Jewish state's pre-1967 war borders. "That is funny, there are tens of U.N. Security Council resolutions that call for that, and Israel is ignoring them all," Qadis said. "He has done nothing for poor Palestinians who die every day in Gaza. He will do nothing for them or for us. Rather, he talks in mere slogans seeking to increase his popularity. I think his only achievement was killing Bin Laden, that is all, man."

Then Qadis inhaled on his pipe and puffed out a cloud of smoke. "Look at this smoke ... it is like Obama's speech. Both vanish within seconds!" he said, letting out a big laugh.

There were a few people in the cafe that Obama won over. Abu Natheer, 40, said he viewed the president with pride. "At least he has Islamic origins. We should support him. He is like our representative over there. When I hear him talk, he is like one of our citizens," Natheer said. "I am supportive of whatever he says. Obama is the only hope for Arabs in the White House."

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-- Salar Jaff and Ned Parker in Baghdad

 

Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Osama bin Laden, expressed hope Monday that the death of its most notorious native son would help the battle against terrorism. 

“An official source expressed the hope of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that the elimination of the leader of the terrorist Al Qaeda organization would be a step toward supporting international efforts aimed at fighting terrorism," the state’s official news agency said, Reuters news agency reported.

The muted reaction underscored Saudi Arabia’s complicated history with Bin Laden.

As a young man in the 1980s, Bin Laden helped Saudi efforts in funding Arab fighters battling the Soviet-backed Afghanistan government.

Eventually, Bin Laden turned against the Saudi royal family over its decision to allow U.S. troops on the Arabian peninsula during Iraq’s 1990-1991 invasion of Kuwait. He was stripped of his citizenship in 1994, but his family retained privileged status in Saudi Arabia.

Bin Laden’s radical politics continued to hold sway with some Saudi youth as Al Qaeda carried out attacks in the desert kingdom mainly in 2003. With an internal crackdown against Al Qaeda, Saudi fighters headed to Iraq to battle the US military and Iraq’s Shiite-led government through 2007.

Only after concerted pressure from the Americans, did the Saudi royal family make a serious effort to try to stop the the migration of young Saudi radicals to Iraq.

— Ned Parker in Cairo

Photo: Saudi men watch a TV broadcasting a report about Osama bin Laden in Riyadh. Credit: Hassan Ammar/AP

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Baghdad’s scourge of mysterious killings continues almost seven months after a national election that has so far failed to produce a government.   Assailants regularly target their victims with silencer pistols or small bombs.  

In the latest such attack, a police officer was gunned down in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Khadra on Monday morning, according to police sources.  On Sunday, gunmen with silencers killed a civil servant from the cabinet. Also killed in other attacks were an official from Iraq’s anti-corruption commission; a lieutenant colonel in the police’s counter-terrorism unit; and an army major, police said. In a separate attack, a state television announcer was wounded when assailants planted a bomb on his car Monday.  Another state television announcer was killed a few weeks ago in a near-identical attack.

With final results in Iraq's election set to be announced Friday, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki and his secular rival, former Premier Iyad Allawi, are neck in neck in the race to form the next national government.

Whether the results will even stand has been clouded by Maliki's allegations of fraud and a demand for a recount.

Below are the US military's estimates on the final results based on the counting of 95 percent of the votes in the March 7th national election.

The projections put Maliki's State of Law coalition at 90 seats and Allawi's Iraqiya list at 87 seats.

Maliki's Shiite rivals in the Iraqi National Alliance are projected to win 70 seats and the main Kurdish blocs a total of 56 seats. It is a far-from-comfortable majority for forming the next government and would leave Maliki vulnerable to being unseated.

-- Ned Parker

Click the images to see them full-size

When Baghdadis awoke this morning to find their streets sealed off and the city under virtual lockdown, the rumors began to fly.

Army officers had staged a coup in the Green Zone, one version said. No, it was Baathists loyal to the former regime who had taken over, according to another.

Mostly, the rumors concerned the Sunni lawmaker Saleh Mutlak, who has been recommended for disbarment from the upcoming March elections by the former De-Baathification Committee, now known as the Accountability and Justice Committee.

Mutlak had been assassinated, according to the most widespread rumor, a variation of which had Mutlak staging the coup in the Green Zone. The Mutlak rumors reached Kurdistan, where anxious travelers fretted over whether it would be safe to fly back to Baghdad.

At midday, government officials appeared on television to calm the capital.

"The security forces can't stage a coup. Our security forces are professional," military spokesman Mohammed Askari told a news conference. "The era of coups is gone."

Ammar Hakim sits in a mansion alongside the Tigris River. The 39-year-old cleric became the head of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (formerly referred to as the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council) in late August after the death of his father, Abdelaziz Hakim, from lung cancer. Now the party’s future rests on his shoulders; Hakim may also very well help choose Iraq’s next government and decide whether his rival Prime Minister Nouri Maliki gets a second term in office. Hakim has been a prominent player on the Iraqi political stage since 2007. His late father groomed him for his leadership role and recommended him as his successor. 

But Hakim heads his party at a time of titanic shifts in Iraq’s political process: the main Shiite political coalition has splintered, with Hakim playing an important role in forming the new Iraqi National Alliance, while Maliki has chosen to run his own list. Iraq's political landscape has also tilted away from the religious-based politics that initially benefited the ISCI in the first national elections after the ouster of Saddam Hussein. Now, all sides, including Hakim’s, are seeking to present themselves as post-sectarian parties, concerned more with issues of stability and reconstruction than sect.

ISCI, once arguably the most influential Shiite party in the government, has suffered setbacks in the last year as it was voted out in provincial elections in January in most of southern Iraq. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Hakim floated the idea of an alliance with Maliki before or after the elections through a broader bloc, called the National Front, in order to decide on the basic shape of the next government and its policies. He warned such a partnership was necessary to avoid a lengthy period of drift ahead of the formation of the next government. He also chastised the Maliki government, which ISCI has participated in, and downplayed the prime minister’s individual achievements. Hakim also hit out at his critics who have labeled his party’s new coalition as being under Iranian influence and not going far enough in reaching out to Sunni parties. The young leader’s moves in this next stage, ahead of the American drawdown in Iraq, could very well determine his future and that of his party’s.

Prime Minister Nouri Maliki announced a new coalition for national elections on Thursday that aims to break with the basic template of sectarian politics that has driven Iraqi politics since 2003.

Questions linger about the extent of Maliki’s evolution and his ability to sustain a long-term coalition of such disparate interests, including secular nationalists, Sunni tribal sheiks and Shiite religious nationalists.

However, interviews in Baghdad revealed both the enduring appeal of Maliki’s message and the continuing hold of sectarian-based identity politics on the population.

Below are the comments of some Iraqis interviewed by The Times in the mainly Sunni neighborhood of Adhiniyah, once a fount for Iraq’s Sunni insurgency.

Today, Shiite cleric Sheik Jalaluddin Saghir, a senior member of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, or SIIC, gave a telling glimpse of his political party’s internal thinking, with national elections on the horizon.

SIIC, has had a rough year. In August, the party’s leader,  Abdelaziz Hakim, passed away and was succeeded by his 38-year-old son, Ammar Hakim. The death came after the party’s trouncing in provincial elections last January. Rumors abounded about internal divisions over the young Hakim’s succession. The movement has also watched as Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, once thought of as weak, has emerged as the most influential player in Iraq’s political arena.  No longer beholden to SIIC, Maliki has opted not to join his old partners but instead to assemble his own list for the national elections, scheduled for January.

Forsaken by Maliki, SIIC has carried on with its own slate, called the Iraqi National Alliance, made up mostly of Shiite religious parties. It has ambitions to outdo Maliki at his own game by presenting itself as the true defenders of nationalism and good governance.

Young people buy cotton candy at Baghdad's Abu Nawas street park to celebrate the Eid holiday.

 

On the last night of the Muslim holiday of Eid, families packed Baghdad's park on Abu Nawas street on the eastern bank of the Tigris River. People rejoiced at a quiet holiday and the gradual reduction in attacks since late 2007, although the Iraqi capital remains a violent and unpredictable place.

Families gathered in this park stretching along the curved bank of the Tigris, which has traditionally been a festive gathering spot for families with its parched grassy lawns and fish restaurants long before the 2003 ouster of the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.  Musicians played the oud and guitar. Drummers banged away, and fireworks illuminated the sky in spurts.

"We come here on a daily basis at 7 p.m. and stay here to enjoy ourselves till midnight. Security is good and we feel great. We don't fear anything. Terrorism is over. Our government is stronger," said Iman Adel, talking about her family's daily trips to the park during the Eid holiday. "We can lead a normal life now. Take a good look around and you will understand what I mean."

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has turned the heat up on his Arab neighbors after last month’s double bombings at the foreign and finance ministries, which killed about 100 people. Maliki and his government have repeatedly accused Syria of providing shelter to those behind the blasts. Syria has denied the charge, and some Iraqi politicians have raised serious questions about whether Syria or the Baath Party was involved.

Today, Maliki once more slammed his neighbors. “We will continue looking [for a way] to close all the gaps and the doors from which the killers can breathe again. We censure the others from our brothers, friends and the neighborly countries,” Maliki said on a visit to the southern city of Karbala. “They used to say that they are with us and they did stand with us in certain situations, but how can we describe the practice of embracing the killers. To where will they be exported [next] time, to Iraq again or to a different country? Can the evil be contained to one specific country?” 

Maliki has asked the U.N. Security Council to establish a formal investigation into the bombings. He has also accused Syrian intelligence agents of sitting in on a meeting in July of Baath Party officials and Islamic militants. The government sees it as the latest episode in which Syria has allegedly been complicit in the activities of anti-Iraq militants. Iraqi security officials confirmed today that they had sent additional security forces to reinforce the vast Syria-Iraq border. 

Since the bombings, the government has revived the practice of showing taped confessions from alleged militants. Two confessions have been shown on state television and a third was aired at a news conference. The first confession was of an Iraqi arrested for the Aug. 19 attack, who blamed Baath Party leaders in Syria for planning the attack. The other confessions have shown foreign fighters recounting their alleged travels through Syria. There is no way to verify whether the taped remarks were genuine or staged.  But they mark a concerted effort to blame Syria in part for recent security breaches.

On Wednesday and Thursday, the state channel broadcast the purported confessions of an alleged fighter from Yemen named Mohammed Oud.

The following are excerpts from the broadcast: