BAGHDAD, 21 April 2003 — Saddam Hussein’s sole surviving son-in-law has surrendered and an Iraqi minister of higher education and scientific research has been captured.
A leading Iraqi opposition group said yesterday that Saddam’s son-in-law had surrendered to them and would be handed over to US forces in Baghdad within hours.
The Iraqi National Congress said that Jamal Mustafa Sultan Al-Tikriti, number 40 on the US list of 55 most wanted Iraqis, had returned from Syria to surrender to them.
“He is the first close member of the family to be detained,” the group’s spokesman Zaab Sethna told Reuters by telephone, saying that Jamal had served as Saddam’s private secretary right up until the end.
He said Jamal had fled to Syria but the INC had persuaded him to come back to Baghdad — along with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer, Khaled Abdallah — and give himself up. Jamal is married to Saddam’s daughter Hala.
Separately, the US Central Command said in a statement that former Iraqi Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research Abd Al-Khaliq Abd Al-Gafar, has been captured. The statement said the former minister was taken into custody on Saturday but did not give any further details. Al-Gafar was listed as number 43 on the US list. Until yesterday, seven of the 55 on the US list have either surrendered or been arrested.
Meanwhile, a former Iraqi general who says he is deputy governor of postwar Baghdad announced that he would head a delegation to an OPEC meeting in Vienna this week.
An OPEC source told Reuters the delegation, led by Jawdat Al-Obeidi and including senior oil officials from Saddam’s deposed government, was due to arrive in Vienna on April 23, a day before the meeting starts.
Obeidi said he was nominated to go to Vienna by Mohammed Mohsen Al-Zubaidi, who has declared himself Baghdad governor.
Zubaidi, an official in Ahmad Chalabi’s INC, said Thursday he had been elected by an assembly of civic leaders to head an interim council to run Baghdad in the wake of the collapse of Saddam’s rule.
However, neither he nor US officials have explained how or when the elections took place and who organized them.
Obeidi said he would be accompanied to Vienna by four Iraqi oil experts — Thamir Abbas Ghadhban, director general of planning in the Oil Ministry, Mazin Juma’h, Rafid Abdul Halim Jasim and Shamakhi Faraj.
Chalabi said yesterday that he does not envisage an Islamic theocracy in Iraq, but religious groups would likely play a role in governing the Muslim nation of 24 million people. “There is a role for Islamic religious parties, for they have some constituencies,” Chalabi told ABC’s “This Week.” “But they are not going to be forcing any agenda or forcing a theocracy on the Iraqi people. They are committed to being part of the electoral process,” he said.
But at a news conference in Baghdad, Zubaidi said Iraq’s new constitution would be derived from Islamic law and promised to try anyone whose “hands are stained with the blood of the Iraqi people.”
Chalabi was at the center of a security scare at his Baghdad compound on Saturday night but he denied in the ABC interview that he had been a victim of an assassination attempt. “People were firing in the air, and a stray bullet landed cold on one of our security people, and he was slightly injured,” Chalabi said.
