MALALAI JOYA
SONALI KOLHATKAR
At 27, Joya is one of the youngest members of the Afghan Parliament. She arrived in the U.S. yesterday and will tour the country until March 24. Kolhatkar, co-director of the Afghan Women’s Mission, said today: “Joya first rose to international prominence in 2003 when she openly denounced the warlords at a gathering to adopt the Constitution. Since then she has received numerous death threats and survived four assassination attempts.”
More Information

IMAD KHADDURI
Khadduri, author of the book Iraq’s Nuclear Mirage: Memoirs and Delusions, worked on the Iraqi nuclear weapons program beginning in 1981 and left Iraq in the late 1990s. He edits the “Free Iraq” blog and has been writing about the emergence of death squads in Iraq as well as the Samarra mosque bombing. Before the invasion of Iraq, he argued that, contrary to what the Bush administration was claiming, the Iraqi nuclear weapons program had been dismantled. Just after the invasion, while many were claiming “Mission Accomplished,” Khadduri argued that substantial resistance would emerge.
More Information

JOSH RUEBNER
The House International Relations Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing Thursday on U.S. policy toward the Palestinians in the aftermath of parliamentary elections. Ruebner is grassroots advocacy coordinator of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. He said today: “Legislation currently being pushed in Congress would punish and isolate the Palestinian people for exercising their right to vote.”
More Information

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167