Syrians hand over Saddam’s half-brother

IRAQI officials said yesterday Syrian authorities had captured Saddam Hussein’s half-brother and 29 other officials of the deposed dictator’s Ba’ath Party in Syria and handed them over to Iraq in an apparent goodwill gesture.

The arrests dealt a blow to an insurgency that some Iraqi officials claim Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan was helping organise and fund from Syria.

Meanwhile, the US military said two US soldiers were killed in an ambush in the capital.

Al-Hassan, a former Saddam adviser, was captured in Hasakah in north-eastern Syria near the Iraqi border, two senior Iraqi officials said speaking on condition of anonymity. Hasakah is about 30 miles from Iraq.

They added that al-Hassan was captured and handed over to Iraqi authorities along with 29 other members of Saddam’s collapsed Ba’ath Party, whose Syrian branch has been in power in Damascus since 1963.

The Iraqi officials did not specify when al-Hassan was captured, only saying he was detained following the February 14 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in Beirut, Lebanon, in a blast that killed 16 others.

Syria has come under intense scrutiny following Mr Hariri’s death, with many in Lebanon blaming Damascus and Beirut’s pro-Syrian government for the killing.

The US and France have also called on Damascus to withdraw 15,000 Syrian troops from Lebanon. Washington has long accused Syria of harbouring and aiding former members of the toppled Ba’athist regime suspected of involvement in the deadly insurgency.

“The capture appeared to be a goodwill gesture by the Syrians to show that they are co-operating,” one Iraqi official said.

Al-Hassan was Number 36 on the list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis released by the US they invaded in March, 2003. He also was named one of the 29 most-wanted supporters of insurgents in Iraq. The US had a €750,000 bounty on him.

Prime Minsiter Ayad Allawi’s office said the arrest “shows the determination of the Iraqi government to chase and detain all criminals who carried out massacres and whose hands are stained with the blood of the Iraqi people, then bring them to justice to face the right punishment.”

It was not known if US troops played any role in the arrest of al-Hassan, who was the six of diamonds in the US-issued deck of cards showing wanted Iraqis.

Saddam’s two other half-brothers, Barzan and Watban, were captured in April, 2003, and are expected to stand trial 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.

Two US soldiers were killed yesterday and another two wounded after apparently being ambushed in south-east Baghdad with a bomb and rifle fire, the military said. The attack raised the weekend death toll for Americans to three. The US command said a marine was killed on Saturday in military operations in central Babil province.

At least 1,494 US military have died since the start of the Iraq war in March 2003. In Baghdad, gunmen attacked police going to work in the Amiriyah district, killing two, police said. Authorities also found the body of an Iraqi woman, dressed in traditional black, with a sign that said ‘spy’ pinned to her chest.

In Latifiyah, 20 miles south of Baghdad, Iraqi troops found four beheaded corpses on a farm. The four belonged to the Badr Organisation, a wing of the main Shi’ite political group, the Supreme Council For the Islamic Revolution. They had been kidnapped earlier on Saturday.

Iraqi authorities also said they were close to capturing the country’s most-wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.