Judges to oversee recount of Iraq’s disputed election picked

Baghdad (dpa), 10 June 2018 - Iraq’s top judicial authority on Sunday selected a group of judges to oversee a manual recount of the votes cast in last month’s parliamentary polls, amid allegations of mass rigging and tampering with the ballots.  

Supreme Judiciary Council spokesman Abdel-Sattar Bairaqdar said the council named the judges at a meeting in the capital Baghdad.  

The judges will take over the work of an independent electoral commission that conducted the May 12 elections, which saw the first-ever use of an electronic voting system in Iraq.  

Some officials at the electoral commission attended Sunday’s meeting.  

“Their participation was aimed at learning first-hand about the nature of the commission’s work and the complaints raised of the elections,” Bairaqdar said in a press statement, without giving further details.  

Nine judges, backed by around 10,000 administrative employees, will conduct the recount, according to media reports.   It is expected to begin later this week and take around one month.