Days of the Union - The First Year - Part 7: The Illicit Gains Law and the 14 July 1958 Coup in Iraq

Friday, 30 May

I returned from Cairo to Damascus, after the Council of Ministers' meetings had ended.

The flight on the Viscount was comfortable, and took only an hour and three-quarters, during which we passed over the ribbon of the Nile, winding like a long serpent between two green banks, with seas of orange sand stretching behind them, east and west, as far as one could wish.

The Greek historian Herodotus was right when he said: Egypt is the gift of the Nile, for without it, Egypt would not exist at all, except as part of the vast, boundless desert stretching across the sprawling African landmass.

Wednesday, 18 June: The Illicit Gains Law

The issue of the Official Gazette dated 17 June 1958 carried the text of Law No. 64, dated 15 June of the same year, concerning illicit gains in the Syrian region.

This is a fundamental law aimed at instilling honesty in the hearts of public officials, and reminding them that integrity is the very backbone of public office.

No one is unaware that Syria's body of civil servants enjoyed, on the whole, a good reputation, especially in its senior ranks.

Its first article provided as follows:

"Every public official, and every member of the legislative representative councils or of the councils representing the regional units, and in general every person entrusted with a public service or holding a public representative capacity, whether permanently or temporarily, and whether paid or unpaid, must submit, within fifteen days of the date of his appointment or election, a declaration of his own financial standing and that of his spouse and minor children as of that date, setting out his fixed and movable assets, in particular shares, bonds, and holdings in companies, insurance contracts, cash, jewelry, metals and precious stones, any entitlement he holds under a religious endowment, and any obligations owed by him..."

This article imposed this obligation on anyone in service when this law took effect, as well as on those who had been in service as of 1 January 1946 and had since left it.

That is to say, it had retroactive effect reaching back twelve years.

The article defined illicit gain as follows:

"Any wealth obtained by any of the persons mentioned in Article 1 through the exploitation of the duties, influence, or circumstances of his position or office.

"And any increase in wealth whose source the person filing the declaration is unable to prove shall be considered illicit gain."

Article 4 added that "any wealth obtained by any natural or legal person through collusion with any of the persons mentioned in Article 1, for the exploitation of his position or office, shall be considered illicit gain."

Article 5 provided for the formation of one or more committees to examine the aforementioned declarations, with the President of the Republic to issue a decision setting out the rules of their formation, organization, and jurisdiction.

To further safeguard the integrity of the machinery of state, the law included provisions authorizing the Public Prosecution to bring criminal proceedings before the investigating judge upon receiving a report (whose sender need not be known) or a complaint (from an identified person) alleging the offense of illicit gain, or upon discovering it in the course of an investigation (Article 6).

This authorization for the Public Prosecution to initiate criminal proceedings is, at its core, simply one of its ordinary powers, except that public officials had traditionally enjoyed a special immunity from criminal prosecution, so as not to disrupt the functioning of government, since prosecuting them criminally for an offense arising from their office had not previously been possible without a decision of the Disciplinary Council.[1]

This law freed the hand of the investigating judge with respect to the official under prosecution, expressly permitting him not to be bound by the safeguards set out in the Code of Criminal Procedure. Article 6 specifically provided that he "shall not be bound by Article 70 (the right of the defendant, the private plaintiff, and the party civilly liable to be present during investigative proceedings), Article 73 (the inadmissibility of objections as to jurisdiction), Article 89 (freedom from the formalities governing entry into and search of homes), Article 91 (the requirement that a search be carried out in the defendant's presence), Article 92 (summoning him to be present for the search of his place of business or home), and Article 97 (the formalities governing the examination of papers and correspondence)."

The law required, however, that in such cases "there be an overriding necessity."

This law also gave the investigating officer the right to decide to suspend an official under suspicion regarding his financial standing, without needing to refer the matter to the Disciplinary Council, since the text provided that he "shall have the powers of the Disciplinary Council."

If, after investigation, he found the official guilty, he would refer him to the Criminal Court for trial before it.

If that court found him guilty, it would sentence him to the forfeiture of the illicit gain, dismissal from office, imprisonment for a term ranging from six months to three years, and forfeiture of his pension rights, provided that those entitled to that pension on his account, such as his wife and minor children, were not thereby harmed.

The law safeguarded the soundness of its rulings by opening the door to appeal against them before the Court of Cassation (Article 3 of the said law).

To encourage people to expose corrupt officials, Article 19 granted "anyone who reports an illicit gain, where his information leads to a ruling of forfeiture of that gain, one-fifth of the amount ordered forfeited."

Friday, 11 July

President Abdel Nasser authorized the Minister of Interior, Abdul Hamid al-Sarraj, "to exercise the power set out in Article 12 of Legislative Decree No. 54, dated 12 January 1952, to bar foreigners, or some of them, from entering certain provinces," by a decision issued specifically on this subject, No. 687, dated 25 June 1958, though it was only published in the Official Gazette yesterday, 10 July.

The sole purpose of this delegation was speed, to prevent certain foreigners who came for harmful purposes, such as proselytizing, in whichever province they believed they might succeed in spreading their poison.

This measure was adopted for reasons relating to security and public safety.

A comprehensive law was later issued (Decree-Law No. 89 of 1960) regulating the entry of foreigners.

Monday, 14 July 1958: Coup in Iraq

I was woken this morning by a friend calling on the telephone to tell me he had picked up a broadcast from Baghdad announcing that a coup had taken place there against the monarchy, and that the armed forces had seized power in Iraq.

This news struck me forcefully, for it was bound to have profound repercussions at the level of both Arab and international politics.

Iraq's rulers, and its Prime Minister Nuri al-Said above all, had been relentless in their hostility toward the Republic headed by Gamal Abdel Nasser, and extreme in their headlong rush toward the "Free World" bloc. Iraq was a "guaranteed" member of the Baghdad Pact, made up of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan, which America and its allies had set up to encircle the Soviet Union from the south. This pact sat between two complementary alliances, NATO and the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization.

America, the leading power of these alliances, was uneasy at the neutrality of Egypt and Syria, which it regarded as a dagger in its side and a direct threat to Jordan, which cooperated with it, and to Lebanon, which was counted among its allies, not to mention the loathing of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states for anything of a leftist bent, or anyone who believed in social justice, which they regarded as a communist movement.

I set about following the news across the various radio stations.

I learned that the coup had two leaders, one a brigadier named Abd al-Karim Qasim (called "al-Za'im" in Iraq, a military rank once used in our own army before the Union), and the other Colonel Abdul Salam Arif.

I also learned that the Foreign Minister was Dr. Abdul Jabbar Jomard, that Siddiq Shanshal was Minister of News and Guidance, and that Dr. Jabir al-Umar was Minister of Education.

All three were friends of mine, well known for their unionist, nationalist leanings.

Abdul Jabbar had been my companion at the University of Paris, where he too held a doctorate in law. We remained in constant contact, and we would often meet in the evenings at one of its cafes, the Café Dupont especially (very well known) and the Source (as we used to call it), talking of university news, since we were students of the same faculty, the famous Faculty of Law, or of news of the world war, whose tragedies we lived through at the very heart of events, enduring with patience and endurance the poor food, the cutting off of news from our families and our homelands, and the anxiety over our own future and that of our nation.

He was a poet of sweet expression, cultured meaning, and Parisian rhyme.

He was a native son of Mosul.

Among his most notable traits were his intense caution and his weak trust in people.

The word "Jomard" means "the generous one," apparently in the Kurdish language, and we in Aleppo, in our youth, used to say "Joumart" in this same sense.

Mr. Faris al-Khouri once teased him, when he was studying law at the Damascus Institute of Law, before his departure for France, asking him:

"Are you really true to your own name?" He answered at once:

God knows, and the days bear witness,

I am generous, though we are penniless.

Our own learned professor delighted in a good joke and loved to cite poetry in reply, a habit we inherited from some of our own teachers.

As for Siddiq Shanshal, he was known for his firm nationalist convictions. I knew him in Paris, and he played a prominent role in opposing Nuri al-Said's regime, and was on close terms with Abdel Nasser.

Abdul Jabbar Jomard visited me in Aleppo in 1947, during the election battle held in our country that year on the single-stage system, in which we won a resounding victory. He was wearing the Iraqi "sidara" cap on his head, and I asked him to take it off, first because it was summer, and second because the presence of an Iraqi "guest" might arouse suspicion of ties with Iraq, which were not viewed favorably at the time.

Damascus was also the place of refuge for Dr. Jabir al-Umar, a university professor who had earned his doctorate from a German university, and who had fled to Syria to escape the tyranny of al-Said's unjust regime. The Syrian Faculty of Arts made use of his services teaching education, his own specialty.

He was calm in thought, measured in speech, pleasant in company, and possessed a deep and abiding faith in the unity of our Arab nation, from its Ocean to its Gulf.

I therefore felt tremendous relief when I heard their names announced over the radio, holding these sensitive ministerial posts, and I was reassured as to the soundness of the coup's direction, one that did away with the monarchy and pulled Iraq out of that ill-omened pact, known by the name of Baghdad, when it more rightly deserved to bear the name of Iran or Turkey, the two states that had opposed Arab liberation with every kind of ferocity and malice.

When al-Hinnawi's coup took place in Damascus in 1949, my brothers Abdul Jabbar and Siddiq visited me at my home in Damascus, to discuss with me the question of a Syrian-Iraqi union. I told them frankly that I opposed this direction, so long as a monarchical system and the Iraqi treaty still existed, though they remained optimistic that a day would come when these two constraints would fall away.

I recall, purely for the memory of it, that they proposed the city of Deir ez-Zor as the seat of the new union, to make it easier for citizens, both Iraqi and Syrian, to reach the new "capital."

And now, these two constraints have fallen away, eight years later, opening the doors to a political future fraught with every possibility and every danger.

By a strange coincidence, I had attended a lecture at the Arab Club some days before, representing Mr. Akram al-Hourani, Vice President of the Republic, delivered by Mr. Abd al-Karim Zuhur. I was accompanied to it by Dr. Jabir and Mr. Youssef Rouissi, the brilliant Tunisian opposition figure and right-hand man of Habib Bourguiba, who later became President of the Tunisian Republic after Tunisia won its independence. I do not know why Youssef did not join Bourguiba, preferring instead to remain in Damascus as an honored and respected "refugee." Perhaps it was on account of Bourguiba's authoritarian bent.[2]

I asked Jabir: when would Iraq stir? He was deeply pessimistic about the future, since Nuri al-Said and his henchmen held the reins of government in an iron fist that showed no mercy in its grip.

On this very day, one that was beginning to reveal the breaking of a bright Arab dawn, America requested a meeting of the United Nations Security Council, to discuss the situation in Lebanon. Lebanon had for weeks been the scene of armed clashes, led by a strong opposition to President Camille Chamoun's regime. To keep Lebanon independent and friendly to the West, Chamoun turned to America asking for help, but his requests remained little more than desperate appeals.

America's move to summon the Security Council today, then, must surely have been aimed at addressing the Iraqi coup, which might turn its attention toward the United Arab Republic, in which case Lebanon and Jordan would find themselves in a dangerous position, requiring something to be done to keep the breath of life in their own pro-Western regimes.

Iraq's revolution announced that it had killed King Faisal, and his maternal uncle, who had served as regent during his minority and had governed the country from behind the young king, along with a number of members of the royal family. It also announced that it had killed, that same morning, Nuri al-Said's son, while Nuri himself managed to flee, pursued by curses for what he had done to his own people and nation.

The new name the radio station began broadcasting was: "This is the Voice of the Republic of Iraq."

The United Arab Republic immediately announced its recognition of the new Republic of Iraq.

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Endnotes:

[1] Disciplinary Council Law No. 37, dated 5 February 1950. This law was later repealed and replaced by Legislative Decree No. 90, dated 22 August 1962.

[2] Bourguiba is still alive as I write this page, in April 1995, and now lives virtually confined to his palace near Tunis, after being overthrown by his own army commander, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, on the grounds that he had become incapable of managing the affairs of state due to the "senility" that had overtaken him. I knew him in Aleppo in 1946, where he gave a lecture demanding Tunisia's independence.