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Groups Urge Scientist’s Release
By Gwendolyn Bradley
Several higher education groups, including the AAUP, have asked the U.S. State Department to free Huda Ammash, an Iraqi scientist who turned herself in to the U.S. military in 2003 after U.S. officials said that she had participated in Iraqi biowarfare research programs. Ammash has remained in prison since that time, but she has not been charged with a crime and no evidence of biowarfare programs has been found. Prior to the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime, Ammash held positions in his government; she was also a dean in the Women’s College at Baghdad University and a member of the Iraq Academy of Sciences.
In a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, AAUP general secretary Roger Bowen wrote, “Credible sources inform us that Dr. Ammash has been wrongly accused of helping develop a chemical weapons program that, as we now know, did not exist. She has written critically of the environmental devastation wrought by sanctions and war, but, as an academic yourself, you know that her writings enjoy the protection offered by academic freedom and Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”
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