Tainted by association

IOC calls for new Iraqi Olympic committee

LONDON (AP) -- The Iraqi Olympic committee should be dissolved and replaced by a new group with no links to the torture and other abuses which took place under Saddam Hussein's regime, the IOC said Wednesday.

The IOC ethics commission made the recommendations after investigating allegations that the Iraqi committee -- headed by Saddam's elder son Odai -- brutalized and jailed athletes.

The committee's headquarters in Baghdad were largely destroyed in U.S.-led bombing raids in the early days of the Iraq war. There have been no confirmed sightings of Saddam or his son since the collapse of the regime.

The ethics panel made three recommendations -- formal dissolution of the Iraqi committee, creation of a new Olympic committee, and provisions to ensure that no one involved in the abuses be part of the new group.

International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge said the proposals will be submitted to the IOC executive board next week in Madrid, Spain.

"The recommendation is exactly what I expected it to be," Rogge said in a conference call with reporters. "There is a strong condemnation of the actions that were taken" under Odai Hussein's rule.

The IOC investigated a complaint lodged by the London-based human rights group Indict alleging widespread torture, beatings, harassment and corruption by Iraq's Olympic committee.

Among other things, Indict said Odai once made a group of track and field athletes crawl on newly poured asphalt while they were beaten and ordered that some be thrown off a bridge. The committee's headquarters included a jail and torture chambers.

Since the fall of Baghdad, reports have emerged that the committee building held a sarcophagus, with long nails pointing inward so victims could be punctured and suffocated, and a metal framework used to apply electric shocks.

Rogge said the ethics probe found "all the allegations were absolutely credible."

The IOC has been criticized for not acting sooner on accusations of abuse in Iraq. But Rogge said the first time the IOC heard about alleged torture of athletes was when it received the Indict complaint on Dec. 6.

Rogge said the IOC was only aware of allegations made to FIFA, soccer's world governing body, that members of the Iraq national soccer team were tortured after losing a match. A FIFA investigation in 1997 found no conclusive evidence to confirm the allegations.

The IOC panel interviewed exiled Iraqi athletes in London and examined the Indict documents. Rogge said the panel asked for explanations from the Iraqi committee but received no answer "for understandable reasons."

Although the Iraqi committee no longer exists following the U.S.-led invasion, Rogge said the IOC move to dissolve the group amounts to more than just a symbolic gesture.

"It is a moral judgment of actions that were absolutely not acceptable," he said. "It's also preventing anyone who was involved in the past with the NOC (national Olympic committee) from playing a role in the future NOC of Iraq. It's a prevention measure for the future."

Rogge said IOC officials will meet soon in Lausanne, Switzerland, with a group of Iraqi exiles in Europe who have formed a provisional Olympic committee based in Germany.

They will discuss ways of rebuilding sport in Iraq and work with athletes and officials both inside and outside the country who were "not involved in any way with the atrocities committed."

`We will check whether they were accomplices in any of the wrongdoing," Rogge said. "If they have a clean sheet we will work with them and exiles together."

Rogge said the IOC would also provide financial and other assistance to help athletes and coaches train for next year's Olympics in Athens, Greece.

"We will set up a plan to identify the best athletes in Iraq and in exile," he said. "They will be eligible for special training and coaching, probably overseas. We will have a list of athletes we will support and train. These athletes will be present in Athens."

Iraq sent 46 athletes to the 1980 Moscow Olympics but only four to the Sydney Games in 2000.

 

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