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Iraq Official Wanted in Germany
By SCHEHEREZADE FARAMARZI
Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - An Iraqi official charged with purging Saddam Hussein's Baath party from government faces prison if he returns to Germany — his home of 25 years — for his role in an Iraqi Embassy raid.
Mithal al-Alusi, a senior aide to Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi, is among six Iraqis sentenced in the takeover of the Iraqi Embassy in Berlin in August 2002, seven months before the war.
A German citizen, al-Alusi left the country for Iraq last November and said he notified the judge, who wished him "success."
But a spokesman for Berlin's state court said Monday that al-Alusi and the other men didn't have permission to go.
"They had to check in with the police, that was the order of the court, and they haven't," Boedeker told The Associated Press. "If they return to Germany they will be arrested."
Boedeker disputed al-Alusi's claim that the judge allowed him to leave. "I wouldn't think the judges meant that," he said.
German police have issued a national arrest warrant for the men, including al-Alusi, director general of the Supreme Committee of National de-Baathification and a member of Chalabi's Iraqi National Council.
Four of the five men left Germany for Iraq on March 10, al-Alusi said. German authorities issued the men travel documents dated Feb. 27, 2004. They also provided plane tickets and pocket money — about $600 each. Al-Alusi produced copies of the travel documents and the Royal Jordanian airline tickets.
The fifth, Muslih al-Jabir, stayed in Germany to marry, said al-Alusi.
The men who took over the embassy called themselves the Democratic Iraqi Opposition of Germany and said their actions were "the first step toward the liberation of our beloved fatherland." German police commandos stormed the embassy and freed two captives after five hours.
Al-Alusi, who owned a women's clothing shop in Hamburg, did not help storm the embassy, but planned the operation.
The men spent 13 months in a German jail before they were each sentenced in September to three years and three months in prison. They were freed pending appeal.
Al-Alusi said the judge promised he would be released if al-Alusi agreed to remove from defense evidence a statement by Iraqi diplomats in the embassy that they hadn't been treated as hostages.
Jatta Heck, al-Alusi's German lawyer, confirmed his account.
They're not so much "free" as "spared imprisonment" pending appeals, Heck told AP in Berlin. She said the Iraqis had to check in with the police, but "the judge was clear — he signaled that they could also leave."
"There is only a national arrest warrant, not international, but the judge has known for many months that he is back in Baghdad and Mr. al-Alusi has always said that he will come back when the process goes forward," Heck said.
The appeals court has not decided whether to hear the case, she said, but if there's a new trial, her client will return to Germany. If the verdict is upheld, Heck said al-Alusi would return to prison, though he likely would only serve a few months.
The other men are Mohammed Tariq Mahmud Jal al-Aukati, 35, Harith Abed Ahmed al-Mashhadani, 35, Abdel Karim al-Khafagi, 45, and Ali Swah Ayada al-Furaidji, 39. They were refugees in Germany.
"I am surprised by their behavior," said al-Furaidji, al-Alusi's deputy at the de-Baathification committee. "We left legally with German documents."
Al-Mashhadani said they notified the police and that German intelligence knew of their plans.
"We kept asking if we could really leave and everyone said 'yes.' Police said they didn't mind," al-Mashhadani said.
Al-Aukati runs the committee's science department. Al-Khafagi is a clerk at the committee.
The de-Baathification program, which has purged thousands, uses computer databases and files of thousands of former party members to identify those who did not commit crimes or abuse their positions.
Eleven months after its start, occupation authorities in April began softening the purge, letting thousands of teachers and professors cleared as "Baath members in name only" return to work, for example.
The top U.S. administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, also announced that the new Iraqi army would recruit former high-level officers from Saddam's disbanded military.
Chalabi, who led the purge, called the rehiring of former party members "the same as Nazis taking part in a German government."
Chalabi, once favored by the Pentagon (news - web sites) that groomed him as a possible Saddam successor, is now embroiled in a battle with the occupation authority. U.S. forces raided his offices and home for documents.
Al-Alusi suggested Bremer might be behind the attempt to return him in jail and had asked Chalabi several months ago "to get rid of me."
"He said I am a terrorist for making problems with Germans. Chalabi said he's an Iraqi hero and he's no criminal," al-Alusi said.
He added: "I am not afraid of Mr. Bremer ... Mr. Bremer is an American and I'm an Iraqi and I will stay in Iraq and he has to leave."
Associated Press writer David Rising contributed to the story from Berlin.
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