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Govt to hunt for missing citizens

B Izzak
Kuwait Times
October 8, 2006
 
KUWAIT: The National Assembly Human Rights panel approved a proposal yesterday calling on the government to form a committee to search for Kuwaiti nationals believed to be missing abroad, secretary of the committee said yesterday. MP Waleed Al-Tabtabae said the proposal, filed by Islamist MP Abdullah Okash, also calls on the committee to follow up the situation of four Kuwaitis detained at the US prison at Guantanamo Bay. The proposal calls for the committee to be formed of representatives from the ministries of interior, foreign and justice. Tabtabae said the approval of the proposal came after it received many complaints from Kuwaiti families calling on the committee to help find their relatives who are believed to be missing in Syria, Iraq and Pakistan. The committee will also follow up with the cases of four Kuwaitis still detained at Guantanamo for almost the past five years, Tabtabae said. The United States has so far freed eight Kuwaitis from Guantanamo.
 
Six of them were tried by Kuwaiti courts that acquitted five of them and sentenced the sixth to five years in jail.
 
An unknown number of Kuwaitis have been reported missing or killed in Iraq and Syria, some of them in detention. Tabtabae said that the committee also called for establishing a special institution for delinquent girls and for reviewing the procedures involving female inmates at the correction house.
 
In another Assembly business, Islamist MP Jamaan Al-Harbash said yesterday that he has agreed to delay plans for quizzing the commerce and industry minister Falah Al-Hajeri for two months. The announcement came after a meeting between Harbash and Hajeri, who promised to deal with all allegations of corruption in his ministry, particularly in the Public Industrial Authority. Meanwhile, another Islamist MP Khudair Al-Enezi sent a large number of questions to state minister for municipality affairs about suspected corruption cases. Enezi urged the minister to be objective and answer the questions and also to take all the necessary measures against corruption and corrupt officials at the Municipality.

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