Parliament adjourns session until Tuesday

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: The Iraqi Parliament’s Speaker Iyad al-Samarraie adjourned the Monday’s session until next week after the reading of two draft laws. “Al-Samarraie adjourned today’s session (April 20) until Tuesday (April 28) after finishing the first readings of the draft laws, including the non-governmental organizations bill,” Abdulbari Zebari, a member of the Kurdistan Alliance (KA), told IraqiNews.com news agency. Yesterday (April 19), the vote to elect a speaker resulted in Samarraie winning the post with 155 votes. Samarraie, who won the majority of votes, was born in 1946 in the city of Samarra, Salah al-Din province. Samarraie is descending from a renowned family. His father used to be the military attaché in an Arab country before receiving a death sentence and was executed in the 1970s. Samarraie was also a member of the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP). He climbed up the partisan ladder in Iraq and was tracked down by the former regime in 1980. He received a death sentence and had to leave Iraq for neighboring Jordan, later to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and then to the United Kingdom (UK), where he re-established the IIP.   SH (P)/SR 1