Kuwait strips citizenship of Iraqi man who served under Saddam Hussein

A Kuwaiti official on Monday said they had stripped the nationality from a citizen of Iraqi origin, claiming he was a member the long-disbanded militia group working under Saddam Hussein.

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – A Kuwaiti official on Monday said they had stripped the nationality from a citizen of Iraqi origin, claiming he was a member the long-disbanded militia group working under Saddam Hussein.

The statement came from a Kuwaiti official, Nayif al-Ajami, who is the head of a government committee that reviews appeals from denaturalized individuals as well as also the country’s former Justice Minister.

“One of the strange cases” the committee reviewed was that of a person who was “stripped of his nationality after it was discovered he was an Iraqi soldier with Fedayeen Saddam,” Ajami said during an interview with the Kuwait-based al-Rai channel.

Fedayeen Saddam – Saddam’s Men of Sacrifice – was a voluntary paramilitary organization loyal to the Baathist regime’s brutal dictator, Saddam Hussein, the son of whom, Uday, first established in 1995.

The group was subject to basic military training and brandished light weapons. The government relied on them to quell public disputes and unrest. They were dissolved in 2003 after the fall of Saddam.

In that year, Ajami said, “Kuwait received documents” that included lists of officials within the former Iraqi government and while cross-referencing the list, “the name of this person who was granted citizenship appeared.”

He claimed that the man played a role with the Iraqi army “during the invasion,” in reference to Saddam’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

In August 1990, Baghdad took over the whole of Kuwait in a nearly two-day campaign. They were expelled the following year by an international coalition led by the United States.

Ajami did not say when authorities had decided to strip the individual’s citizenship but asserted that it had come after a year-and-a-half-long study of the case. He did not reveal the name of the Iraq-born man but added he “was granted citizenship before the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime.”

Editing by Nadia Riva