Poor attendance at Parliament possibly linked to Secret arrest program

A reporter for Al-Quds al-Arabi tried to track down details of the list of persons, including parliamentarians, named in arrest warrants either issued or to be issued. He says what is circulating among politicians is the idea that the list includes names of enemies of SCIRI among the Shiites, and names of persons in the Iraqi Accord Front, adding:

But a member of the Muslim Scholars Association Bashar al-Fayadi said from Amman there is also an arrest warrant naming him and a number of other members of that association, adding that a total of over 50 arrest warrants have recently been issued in Baghdad against politicians and tribal figures, and he urged the government to announce these publicly. [Others say the number is much less, for instance] a member of parliament by the name of Haydar Abadi said there are a number of parliamentarians and politicians with arrest warrants against them pursuant to the law on fighting terrorism, but the security and justice agencies are in possession of confessions respecting their involvement in supporting terrorism, and in any event the number of politicians involved is no more than ten.

Rumors abound. Some think recent raids on two members of parliament, one UIA and one Iraqi Accord Front, indicated they were targets, but a security source told the reporter this is merely cases of running down information obtained from the confessions of persons involved in terror, who have given information about involvement of politicians that needs to be verified. The reporter adds that parliamentary president Mashhadani, currently on a tour of London, Rome, Syria and Jordan, has nothing to say about the whole affair, and doesn't indicate he even knows anything about it.

The reporter concludes with this:

According to security sources, it is the American forces that are in control of the relevant documents, and of the raids and the arrests, maybe even without the knowledge of Prime Minister Maliki. And this perhaps explains recent statements issued by the office of parliamentary deputy Khalaf Alayan (Iraqi Accord Front), which said members of the IAF parliamentary delegation are thinking seriously about leaving Iraq or joining the Iraqi resistance, having become convinced that the Iraqi government is determined to drive all Sunni citizens out of Baghdad. And this is something being seriously considered by parliamentary leaders currently outside of Iraq, possibly not returning to Iraq in these circumstances.

But the American forces continue to not publish the names of the wanted persons, and this could well lead to the collapse of parliament, because of the secrecy and the fostering of doubts [about the scope and details of the program of arrests].