Prisoners released after election

CAIRO, Egypt -- With a U.S. invasion looming, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein reached out to his people Sunday issuing a decree meant to empty his jails of everyone from pickpockets to political prisoners.\nFreshly amnestied inmates were seen streaming out of Iraqi prisons carrying their belongings in plastic shopping bags and some chanting: "We sacrifice our blood and souls for Saddam."\nThe government called the amnesty a way of thanking the nation for re-electing Saddam last week in a referendum, but exiled Iraqis said the hearts-and-minds move was too little, too late.\nU.S. officials dismissed it as a ploy to rally domestic and international support.\n"They better watch out where the next door is that puts them right back in jail. I mean, this is typical of this man's use of human beings for these political purposes of his," Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday on ABC's "This Week."\nWahid Abdel Meguid of the Al-Ahram Center for Strategic Studies, a Cairo-based think tank, said Saddam's move is an attempt to buy time. "Saddam has zero credibility. Nobody will trust him," Abdel Meguid said in an interview.\nSaddam's decree, read on national television, said the "full and complete and final amnesty" applied to "anyone imprisoned or arrested for political or any other reason."\nIn another broadcast, Justice Minister Munthir al-Shawi described the amnesty as "the leader's bounty bestowed on those who walked in the path of sin and wrongdoing in order to give them the chance to return to the nation's folds."\nAl-Shawi said the amnesty will not cover those who spied "for the Zionist entity," referring to Israel, and the United States.\nAmnesty International accuses Iraq of holding tens of thousands of political prisoners and of torturing and executing its opponents. There was no figure available as to how many inmates the amnesty would involve.\nSaddam has made a number of recent attempts to rally public support. Several weeks ago, he ordered a series of measures designed to consolidate his shaky power base through gifts and stipends.\nUnder these new regulations, plots of land have been allocated to loyalists in the army, government and the ruling party. A mortgage bank, which closed down years ago, was reopened to provide interest-free loans to selected officials. Salon cars, mostly French Peugots, were sold at discount prices.\nSince Saddam's re-election, his lieutenants -- known for their sharp tongues -- have soften their diatribe against opposition activists in exile and urged them to return to Iraq.\nBut Iraqi dissidents were quick to dismiss the invitation as "arrogant, scornful and meaningless."\n"This is not an attempt to revise his catastrophic policy, but rather to humiliate those who fought his dictatorship and oppression," said Ali Abdel Amir, editor of Al-Massala, the mouthpiece of the Iraqi Writers' Union in exile.\nAkram al Hakim, a member of the steering committee preparing an opposition conference on a post-Saddam Iraq, said the amnesty was a sign of "weakness and deep frustration."\nHe noted that similar weaknesses by the late shah of Iran led to his speedy downfall in 1979.\n"If Saddam had known even with little certainty that he could stay in power, he wouldn't have taken this step," al Hakim said in an interview from London. "For the first time Saddam realizes that it's serious and this time he has got to go."\nAccording to Abdel Meguid, of the Al-Ahram Center for Strategic Studies, Saddam made such concessions because he thinks he can buy time and drive a wedge between President Bush and U.S. public opinion on the one hand, and the United States and its Arab allies, on the other.\nIraqi opposition groups, like the Center for Human Rights, which is linked to the Iraqi Communist Party, have claimed that at least 2,000-3,000 inmates were executed in 1997-1999 during what the regime dubbed as "Cleaning the Prisons Campaign" supervised by Saddam's youngest son, Qusai. The reports could not be independently confirmed. The Iraqi government does not comment on such allegations.