BAGHDAD, 28 February 2005 — Iraq’s interim government yesterday claimed capturing Saddam Hussein’s half brother, Sabawi Ibrahim Al-Hasan.
In a statement, Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s office said the arrest “shows the determination of the Iraqi government to chase and detain all criminals who carried out massacres and whose hands are stained with the blood of the Iraqi people, then bring them to justice to face the right punishment.”
It said Ibrahim, an intelligence chief and one-time adviser to Saddam, was No. 36 on the US military’s list of the 55 most-wanted people in Iraq — the six of diamonds.
Iraqi officials who did not want to be identified said Syrian authorities had captured Ibrahim and 29 other Iraqi Baath party officials in Syria and handed them over to Iraq in an apparent goodwill gesture. Ibrahim was captured in Hasakah in northeastern Syria near the Iraqi border, two senior Iraqi officials said.
Last year, Iraqi officials named Ibrahim, who was born to the same mother as Saddam, as one of two former Baath Party officials helping organize the insurgency from Syria. Ibrahim’s capture may put a dent in some insurgent activities, but US commanders say the insurgency is multifaceted and innovative and may take years to defeat.
Yesterday, two US soldiers were killed and another two wounded after they were apparently ambushed in southeast Baghdad with a bomb followed by rifle fire. Their names were withheld pending notification of next of kin. It was the third American military death over the weekend. The US command announced a Marine was killed Saturday during military operations in central Babil province.
In Hammam Alil, 380 km north of Baghdad, a bomb exploded inside the police headquarters, killing five people, including some police officers, said Khorshid Sultan a coroner at the main hospital in Mosul.
The hospital said another four people, all police officers, were killed in an ambush while on patrol southwest of Mosul.
In Baghdad, gunmen attacked police heading to work in a drive-by shooting in the western Amiriyah district, killing two of them, police said. Police also found the body of a dead Iraqi woman, dressed in traditional black, with a sign that said “spy” pinned to her chest.
— Additional input from agencies
