Dr. Germ and Mrs. Anthrax among group released by US
Eight top members of Saddam Hussein's former government are released in Iraq after elections.
In a quiet move this past weekend, the US military in Iraq released without charge eight former aides to Saddam Hussein, including Rihab Taha (known as Dr. Germ) and Huda Ammash, the US-trained scientist nicknamed "Chemical Sally" or "Mrs. Anthrax." Dr. Taha and Dr. Ammash had both spend the past two and a half years in detention.
The Times of London said the two women were "
both high-ranking members of Saddam Hussein's party" and had been accused of being "central figures" in his biological weapons program. In the well-known deck of cards used to show former top officials in the Hussein government, Ms. Ammash was the five of hearts.
Lieutenant-Colonel Barry Johnson, a US military spokesman in Baghdad, said: "They were released as part of an ongoing process for many months in full consultation with the Iraqi Government." They were no longer seen as a security threat. "Many had been held as suspects in possible war crimes and as material witnesses" in cases against the regime, but they "no longer were deemed to have information in this regard".
The releases are widely seen as a form of "outreach" to Iraq's restive Sunni minority, which is facing marginalization under a government led by its erstwhile Shia and Kurdish victims.
Reuters reports that the two women were also released following the US failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. While both
admitted to working on these programs in the past, they had told US authorities that the weapons had been destroyed long before the US invasion.
While the American authorities say only eight people were released, the
BBC reports that Iraqi attorney Badee Izzat Aref says
the number is actually 24, including Hossam Mohammed Amin, head of the weapons inspections directorate, and Aseel Tabra, an Iraqi Olympic Committee apparatchik.
The New York Times reports that another former top official has been released, Humam Abd al-Khaliq, the former minister of higher education and scientific research. Mr. Khaliq had been accused by United Nations inspectors of attempts to
cover up Iraq's efforts to develop nuclear weapons before the Persian Gulf war in 1991, while Amin was the head of the directorate that worked with the UN inspectors.
[Mr. Aref] said in a telephone interview on Monday that high-ranking officials of Iraq's two provisional governments in the last year had resisted the American moves to release the two women, fearing that it would anger Shiites, the majority population in Iraq, who were the principal victims of Mr. Hussein's repression ...
Now, Mr. Aref said, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a religious Shiite who leads the transitional government and hopes to be appointed to the post again in multiparty talks for a new government, seemed eager to ease tensions with the Sunni Arabs, who were the main beneficiaries of Mr. Hussein's rule. Most of the 24 who were released are Sunni Arabs, including the four weapons experts. "Jaafari wanted to do something that would please the Sunnis," Mr. Aref said.
Many of those released on Saturday had already left the country, the Times reported, probably traveling to Jordan.
Al Jazeera, the Arab satellite cable TV network, reports that one of the lawyers representing the former prisoners says Tariq Aziz, another former top level Hussein-era figure,
may also be released soon. Mr. Aziz, the
former deputy prime minister of Iraq, was a familiar figure to many in the west, as he often represented Iraq's interests in negotiations with the United Nations and other organizational bodies.
Meanwhile, in an interview with a British tabloid, Saddam Hussein spoke for the first time
about his capture by US troops. Hussein now says he is sure he was "betrayed" by someone close to him. I came out of the house, where I was hiding, by this hole. I went through the trap door. I went down the hole, through the tunnel... then lost consciousness," Saddam said through his lawyer. Hoping to emerge out of the tunnel unnoticed, Saddam had initially planned to make a "great escape, riding a motorcycle," when he realized that the vehicle was not there and suspected that he had been "betrayed."
"I believe I was betrayed. I have been set up," his lawyer, Ramsey Clark, a former US attorney-general, said, quoting the former dictator. "Saddam thinks he was gassed in the tunnel," he added. Hussein also said that he knows he might be hanged if he is convicted of mass murder. "I don't mind being killed.
There will always be another Saddam," he said.
Also...
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Jay Rockefeller's 2003 private letter to Cheney saying he could not endorse spying on Americans (
The Huffington Post)
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Former ISI chief says USA hand in Zia death (
Press Trust of India)
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Ministers of murder: Iran's new security cabinet (
Human Rights Watch)
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Human Rights Watch says new Afghan parliament "dominated by human-rights abusers"... (
Times of London)
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