BAGHDAD, 21 October 2005 — Iraq’s security forces have arrested a nephew of Saddam Hussein on suspicion he was funneling overseas money to Iraqi insurgents, the government said yesterday.
Yasser Sabawi was arrested Wednesday in the northern town of Tikrit — Saddam’s hometown — as residents protested the start of the ex-president’s trial on charges of crimes against humanity, national security adviser Mowaffaq Al-Rubaie said.
Interior Minister Bayan Baker Solagh said the arrest could reveal important information about the funding of insurgent groups waging a bloody campaign of bombings and kidnappings against Baghdad’s US-backed government.
“He is the link between outside and inside,” Solagh told a news conference.
“Now we have to follow up someone from Saddam’s family. They live in Arab countries. He was bringing the money from them and distributing the money in Iraq,” he said.
The Iraqi government has complained that former officials who served Saddam are helping fund and organize the insurgency from neighboring Jordan. Many of Saddam’s close family live in the Jordanian capital, Amman, which is host to a large expatriate Iraqi population.
Rubaie said Sabawi, one of the sons of Saddam’s half brother and former presidential adviser Sabawi Ibrahim Hasan Al-Tikriti, was arrested while taking part in a protest against the trial.
“He was seen distributing money to incite violence,” Rubaie said. “He was inciting violence to turn a peaceful demonstration into a violent incident.”
The lawyer of one of Saddam’s co-defendants in the trial was kidnapped from his Baghdad office yesterday. Saadoun Sughaiyer Al-Janabi, who was in the courtroom during Wednesday’s opening session of the trial, is one of two lawyers for Awad Hamed Al-Bandar, one of seven Baath Party officials being tried alongside Saddam.
Ten masked gunmen pulled up outside Janabi’s office in Baghdad’s eastern Shaab district in the evening, broke into the building and dragged him out, said Police Maj. Falah Al-Mohammedawi of the Interior Ministry.
On his first postwar visit to Iraq, Arab League chief Amr Moussa yesterday held talks with Iraqi leaders.
The former Egyptian diplomat met Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari and was also expected to hold talks with President Jalal Talabani and leading Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani.
“We spoke about the new Iraq and the specific mission of the head of the Arab League... in the framework of a national dialogue and national Iraqi reconciliation,” Moussa told a news conference after his talks with Jaafari. “We are working so this will be the basis for Iraq’s future.”
For security reasons, the 22-member league had not announced the timing of the secretary-general’s visit, his first to Iraq since a US-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.
When a League delegation visited Iraq earlier this month, gunmen attacked its convoy and killed three police escorts.
