Sabawi Ibrahim Hasan, a half brother of Saddam Hussein and one of the remaining fugitives on the US list of most-wanted Iraqis, has been captured, officials in the prime minister's office said yesterday.
Officials in interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's office, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the capture but gave no details on where it took place or when. It was also not immediately known whether Iraqi forces or US troops had detained Hasan.
PHOTO: AP
Hasan is No. 36 on the list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis released by US authorities after US troops invaded Iraq in March 2003.
According to the US Central Command, only 12 of those 55 most-wanted remain at large. With Hasan's capture, the count would be 11 still at large.
According to the US Central Command, Hasan is also among the 29 most-wanted supporters of insurgent groups in Iraq. The US has put a US$1 million bounty on his head, and he is believed to be a financier of insurgents.
Under Saddam, Hasan served as head of intelligence and security before taking up his last post of presidential adviser in the former regime.
He is also known as Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hasan al-Tikriti, aka Thafir Alsemak.
Saddam's two other half brothers, Barzan and Watban, were captured in April 2003 and are expected to stand trial along with Saddam at the Iraqi Special Tribunal. Both appeared before the special court in Baghdad with Saddam and a handful of others to hear preliminary accusations against them.
Violence continued around the country.
In northern Iraq, major oil fire raged after insurgents blew up a pipeline, while the family of an anchorwoman for a US-funded state television station -- a mother of four who was repeatedly shot in the head -- found her body dumped on a street in the city of Mosul.
Around Baghdad, insurgents killed two civilians in a roadside bombing to the west of the city. To the southwest of the capital, a suicide car bomber killed an Iraqi national guardsman and injured seven people. The US military, meanwhile, announced the death on Saturday of a US Marine during military operations in Babil, just south of Baghdad.
Earlier, the military had announced the death of a soldier killed on Friday in a massive security sweep in the Sunni Triangle.
As part of the offensive, residents in Ramadi, the Sunni-dominated city 112km west of Baghdad, reported clashes between insurgents and US forces, but the military provided no details. US troops have been conducting an offensive in the region for nearly a week.
The US military said an insurgent was killed and another was injured trying to build a bomb in an abandoned house in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown and the site of a Thursday suicide bombing that killed 15 Iraqi police.
The body of Raiedah Mohammed Wageh Wazan, the 35-year-old news presenter for the US-funded Nineveh TV, was found dumped along a Mosul street, six days after she was kidnapped by masked gunmen, according to her husband, who said she had been shot four times in the head.
"This is a criminal act. She was an innocent woman who did not hurt anybody in all her life. I asked her several times to quit for the sake of her safety, but she refused," said Salim Saad-Allah, the husband.
The mother of three boys and a girl had been threatened with death several times by insurgents who demanded she quit her job, Saad-Allah said. The US military confirmed insurgents had threatened station employees.
It was unclear what prompted the kidnapping, but Nineveh TV was attacked last week with mortar rounds that wounded three technicians. An Arabic-language Internet bulletin board recently carried a statement from al-Qaeda In Iraq claiming responsibility for the mortar strike.
Attackers hit the oil pipeline late on Friday, setting fire to the line running about 32km from fields in Dibis to the Kirkuk, which is 240km north of Baghdad. As the line continued to blaze on Saturday night, an official with the state-run North Oil Co said it would take at least four days to repair the line.
Insurgents have regularly targeted Iraq's oil infrastructure, cutting exports and denying the country funds badly needed for reconstruction. Three pipelines were been blown up last week.
Acts of sabotage have blocked exports to Turkey's Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, a major outlet for Iraqi crude, for nearly two weeks.
Political activity moved apace on Saturday as Shiite political dissenters switched course and rallied behind the prime minister candidacy of conservative Islamic Dawa party leader Ibrahim al-Jaafari. The change of heart apparently was linked to Friday's endorsement of al-Jaafari by Iranian-born Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country's most powerful Shiite cleric.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
OVERHAUL: The move would likely mark the end to Voice of America, which was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda and operated in nearly 50 languages The parent agency of Voice of America (VOA) on Friday said it had issued termination notices to more than 639 more staff, completing an 85 percent decrease in personnel since March and effectively spelling the end of a broadcasting network founded to counter Nazi propaganda. US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) senior advisor Kari Lake said the staff reduction meant 1,400 positions had been eliminated as part of US President Donald Trump’s agenda to cut staffing at the agency to a statutory minimum. “Reduction in Force Termination Notices were sent to 639 employees at USAGM and Voice of America, part of a
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
RSS