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Iraq issues warrants for Chalabi, nephew
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-08-09 08:31 Iraq has issued arrest warrants for Ahmad
Chalabi, a former Governing Council member with strong U.S. ties, on
counterfeiting charges, and for his nephew Salem Chalabi — head of the tribunal
trying Saddam Hussein — on murder charges, Iraq's chief investigating judge said
Sunday.
The warrant was the latest strike against Ahmad Chalabi in his removal from
the centers of power. A longtime Iraqi exile opposition leader, he had been a
favorite of many in the Pentagon but fell out with the Americans in the
weeks before the U.S. occupation ended in June.
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Iraqi opposition
leader Ahmad Chalabi is seen in his first public appearance in Baghdad, in
a Friday, April 18, 2003
photo. [AP/File]
| Both men denied the
charges, dismissing them as part of a political conspiracy against them and
their family.
Salem Chalabi, named as a suspect in the June murder of Haithem Fadhil,
director general of the finance ministry, called the accusation "ridiculous."
His uncle said the charges were "outrageous" and "manufactured lies."
Ahmad Chalabi was somewhat marginalized when he was left out of the new
interim government that took power June 28 but has since worked to reposition
himself as a Shiite populist. At the helm of the war crimes tribunal for Saddam,
the Ivy League-educated Salem Chalabi remains a central figure in Iraq.
"They should be arrested and then questioned and ... if there is enough
evidence, they will be sent to trial," Judge Zuhair al-Maliky said.
In Washington, the Bush administration had no comment about the charges
against the Chalabis. "This is a matter for the Iraqi authorities to resolve and
they are taking steps to do so," White House spokeswoman Suzy DeFrancis.
The warrants, issued Saturday, accused Ahmad Chalabi of counterfeiting old
Iraqi dinars, which were removed from circulation after the ouster of Saddam's
regime last year.
Iraqi police backed by U.S. troops found counterfeit money along with old
dinars during a raid on Chalabi's house in Baghdad in May, al-Maliky said. He
apparently was mixing counterfeit and real money and changing them into new
dinars on the street, the judge said.
The accusation is not Ahmad Chalabi's first brush with legal problems. He is
wanted in Jordan for a 1991 conviction in absentia for fraud in a banking
scandal. He was sentenced to 22 years in jail, but has denied all allegations.
The men were out of the country Sunday but promised to return to Iraq to face
the allegations.
"I'm now mobilized on all fronts to rebuff all these charges," Ahmad Chalabi
told CNN from Tehran, Iran, where he was attending an economic conference.
"Nobody's above the law, and I submit to the law in Iraq ... despite my serious
and grave reservations about this court."
"I don't think ... that I had anything to do with the charges so I'm not
actually worried about it," Salem Chalabi told CNN from London. "It's a
ridiculous charge, that I threatened somebody ... there's no proof there."
If convicted, Salem Chalabi, 41, could face the death penalty, which was
restored by Iraqi officials on Sunday, al-Maliky said. His uncle, who is in his
late 50s, would face a sentence determined by trial judges.
Born in Baghdad, the younger Chalabi studied at Yale, Columbia and
Northwestern University and holds degrees in law and international affairs. He
served as a legal adviser to the interim Iraqi Governing Council and was a
member of the 10-member committee framing the basic transitional law for the new
interim government.
But Ahmad Chalabi's star has steadily declined. He was once considered
Washington's most likely choice for Iraqi president after Saddam's fall, but he
was never popular in Iraq and ended up without a job in the new government.
A frequent guest on news talk shows in the United States, Ahmad Chalabi had
significant, and controversial, influence on America's Iraq policy before the
war. His network of Iraqi exiles in the Iraqi National Congress provided the
Bush administration, and some news organizations, with reports on Saddam's
purported weapons of mass destruction programs.
Those weapons were cited by the United States and Britain as the primary
justification for the Iraq war. When no significant weapons stocks were found,
Chalabi became a liability. He has continued to insist that the weapons exist.
Chalabi also was accused recently of informing Iran that the United States
had broken its secret intelligence codes, a charge he branded as "stupid." And
around the time of the raid on his house, U.S. officials privately complained
that Chalabi was interfering with a U.S. inquiry into money skimmed from the
U.N. oil-for-food program by pursuing his own probe.
As relations with his American backers soured, he has tried use the fallout
to enhance his stature among Iraqis, many of whom saw him as an American puppet.
"I've risen higher in the esteem of my people and I'm now much better
positioned politically in the country, because I'm in sympathy with my people.
This is what it is all about," Chalabi said Sunday.
Among his campaigns to win favor with Iraqis have been purging Baath party
members from the Iraqi government and attempting to set up an exclusively Shiite
political party. He recently played peacemaker in ending violence in the Shiite
holy city of Najaf in June.
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