Qubad Talabany gave a speech before the U.S.-Iraq chamber of commerce earlier this week in which he said:

Today, we have a more transparent society. We have a new generation of civil servants undergoing the rigors of academies that stress serving the people and the nation, not themselves, as we work to eliminate corruption. We are generating a free press, and working to pass a press law that decriminalizes libel. We are building institutions to ensure that we strictly uphold the rule of law. We are nurturing a society that for centuries has maintained ethnic and religious tolerance, even under the harshest of circumstances.

And, yet, while saying this to the U.S. audience, Qubad Talabany’s political party is working hard to put the editor of the region’s only independent newspaper in prison using the press law he pretends to criticize for the crime of reporting on corruption. Qubad, it’s time you drop the lawsuits against the press in the area you represent.