
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 20, 1991                   TAG: 9103200056
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: KUWAIT CITY                                LENGTH: Short

KUWAIT TO SEEK DEATH FOR PRISONERS

Kuwait will seek to hang most of the 600 Iraqi, Palestinian and other prisoners being held for alleged war crimes, a prosecutor said Tuesday.

The government will also try in absentia hundreds of Iraqi officers who fled when the allied forces closed in, said Khalid al-Mudaf, an undersecretary at the Ministry of Justice who will head the prosecutions.

"We cannot call them insane," he said of the Iraqi occupiers. "That would allow them to plead insanity. They are men and they will be brought to justice."

The United States will not be involved in the investigation of any crimes committed on Kuwaiti soil, al-Mudaf said in an interview.

The U.S. military's Judge Advocate General's office has set up a center in Kuwait City but it will only be allowed to document war crimes cases, said Lt. Col. Lee Haworth, who heads the office.

by CNB