IRAQ: Equal to Franco

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Iraq's rulers had never spent much energy in improving the lot of their people. But in a burst of zeal remarkable in the Baghdad summer, they tried to suppress Iraqi Communists whose appeal for support is based on Iraq's mass misery.

To set an example, the Government got tough with more than 60 Iraqis charged with a Communist conspiracy against the state. Chief defendant was Yusuf Salman, Moscow-trained Communist leader known to the underground as El Fahd (The Cheetah). Last week El Fahd, pale and thin after an eight-day hunger strike against conditions in his sweltering Baghdad prison, faced his judges in striped pajamas and sandals. Salman fainted in his chair as he heard the sentence: death for him and two codefendants. Thirty-four others were sentenced to prison, 28 were acquitted.

While Iraq's young Regent Abdul Illah (whose approval is necessary for the death sentences) considered whether or not Communism can be stopped by hanging its leaders, Iraqi Communists showed signs that they were still very much alive. Their secret presses, silent during the trial, got out a pamphlet protesting an "action which Hitler dared not take, and only the Franco regime can equal."