US troops raid the home of their former favourite

Ahamd Chalabi, once the Pentagon’s favourite Iraqi, found himself the target of a US army raid in Baghdad today.

American soldiers and Iraqi police entered his home in an exclusive district of the capital.

Chalabi’s aides accused the Americans of trying to pressure him to stop complaining about Washington’s plans for Iraq after sovereignty is transferred at the end of next month.

There was no comment from US authorities, but American officials in Baghdad have complained privately that Chalabi is interfering with an investigation into allegations that Saddam Hussein’s regime skimmed millions in oil revenues during the UN run oil-for-food programme.

In a statement, Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress accused the authorities of behaving in “a manner unbecoming in the climate of the new Iraq” and reminiscent of “the former fascist regime”.

It called on the Iraqi Governing Council, of which Chalabi is a prominent member, to take “a national and responsible stand toward these provocations”.

American soldiers and armed US civilians could be seen milling about Chalabi’s compound in the city’s fashionable Mansour district. Some people could be seen loading boxes into vehicles. Aides said documents and computers were seized without warrants.

A Chalabi aide, Haidar Musawi, accused the Americans of trying to pressure Chalabi, a long-time Pentagon favourite who has become openly critical of US plans for how much power to transfer to the Iraqis on June 30. He said the Americans also raided other offices of the INC.

“The aim is to put political pressure,” Musawi said. “Why is this happening at a time when the government is being formed?”

Musawi said the US-Iraqi force surrounded the compound while Chalabi was inside. They told Chalabi’s aides that they wanted to search the house for Iraqi National Congress officials wanted by the authorities.

The aides agreed to let one unarmed Iraqi policeman inside to look around.

“The Iraqi police were very embarrassed and said that the Americans ordered them to come and that they didn’t know it was Chalabi’s house,” Musawi said.

“The INC is ready to have any impartial and judicial body investigate any accusation against it. There are American parties who have a list of Iraqi personalities that they want arrested to put pressure on the Iraqi political force.”

Salem Chalabi, nephew of Ahmad Chalabi and head of the Iraqi war crimes tribunal, said his uncle told him by telephone that Iraqi and American authorities “entered his home and put the guns to his head in a very humiliating way that reminds everyone of the conduct of the former regime”.

The younger Chalabi said the reason for the raid was unclear but “they must be afraid of his political movement”.

Another official, Qaisar Wotwot, said the operation was linked to Chalabi’s recent comments demanding full Iraqi control of oil revenues and security after the June 30 transfer of power.

“It’s a provocative operation, designed to force Dr Chalabi to change his political stance,” he said.

For years, Chalabi’s INC had received hundreds of thousands of dollars every month from the Pentagon, in part for intelligence passed along by exiles about Saddam’s purported weapons of mass destruction.

Chalabi has come under criticism since large stockpiles of such weapons were never found.

Chalabi, a former banker and long-time Iraqi exile, was convicted of fraud in absentia in Jordan in 1992 in a banking scandal and sentenced to 22 years in jail. He has repeatedly denied the charges.

Chalabi has complained recently about US plans to retain control of Iraqi security forces and maintain widespread influence over political institutions after power is transferred from the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority to an Iraqi interim administration at the end of June.

US and coalition officials have recently accused him of undermining the investigation into the oil-for-food programme.

The investigation has collected more than 20,000 files from Saddam’s old regime and hired an American accounting firm, Ernst and Young, to conduct the review.

Chalabi has launched his own investigation, saying an independent probe will have more credibility.

He took an early lead in exposing alleged abuses of the oil-for-food programme and has been trying to force the coalition to give him the €3.6m in Iraqi funds set aside for the probe to pay for his effort. The move was strongly resisted by the US governor of Iraq, Paul Bremer.

Chalabi’s backers have hired a different firm, KPMG, to do its audit, but they want Bremer’s administration to pay the bill from the Iraqi funds it controls.