Confusion over capture of Saddam deputy
Iraqi officials struggled today to clear up confusion over whether the most wanted member of Saddam Hussein’s ousted dictatorship had been captured in a shoot-out north of Baghdad.
Iraqi authorities claimed yesterday to have captured Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, but later in the day the Iraqi defence minister said word of his arrest was “baseless".
Officials at Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s office today that they were investigating the claims and would issue a statement later to clear up the matter.
There have been incorrect reports of al-Douri’s arrest in the past as US and Iraqi forces hunt for the man who was once one of Saddam’s most senior deputies. Sunday’s report centred on a raid near al-Douri’s hometown of Adwar, north of Baghdad.
Iraq’s top information official said al-Douri was seized while receiving medical treatment at a clinic near Adwar and that DNA tests were underway to confirm his identity. Al-Douri reportedly suffers from leukaemia, and needs blood transfusions.
“We are sure he is Izzat Ibrahim,” information official Ibrahim Janabi said. “He was arrested in a clinic in Makhoul near Tikrit and Adwar and 60% of the DNA test has finished.”
A Defence Ministry spokesman, Saleh Sarhan, also told the US-funded Alhurra television station that al-Douri had been captured.
Later, however, the Iraqi defence minister, Hazem Shaalan, said reports that al-Douri was captured were not true.
“They are baseless,” he said. “There are search operations by the national guards troops and multinational troops going on during which some terrorist positions were shelled. There were rumours that Izzat al-Douri or someone who resembles him were in that position but we don’t have any information on Izzat specifically.”
A senior US diplomat said the Americans had no information to indicate that al-Douri had been arrested.
Iraqi Minister of State Qassim Dawoud also claimed that al-Douri was arrested and said 150 men defending him also were detained.
Al-Douri was once the vice chairman of the Baath Party’s Revolutionary Command Council and US military officials believe he played an organising role in the 16-month-old insurgency.
He is number six on the US military’s list of 55 most-wanted figures from Saddam’s regime – the king of clubs in the deck of cards – and US forces have offered a £6m (€9m) bounty for his arrest. Forty-four of the people on the list already have been killed or captured.
Dawoud, the minister of state, said the trial of Saddam and other indicted officials from his regime would start ”within a few weeks ... before the end of this year and before elections,” which are planned for January.
Saddam so far has had seven preliminary charges filed against him, including gassing thousands of Kurds in 1988, the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the suppression of 1991 revolts by Kurds and Shiites, the murders of religious and political leaders and the mass displacement of Kurds in the 1980s.
