Chalabi and nephew dismiss counterfeiting, murder charges

Former Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmed Chalabi and his nephew Salem – head of the tribunal trying Saddam Hussein – have dismissed charges against them as "ridiculous".

Iraq has issued arrest warrants for Ahmad Chalabi, who has strong US ties, on counterfeiting charges, and for Salem on murder charges.

The warrant was the latest strike against Ahmad Chalabi in his removal from the centres of power.

A longtime Iraqi exile opposition leader, he had been a favourite of many in the Pentagon but fell out with the Americans in the weeks before the US occupation ended in June.

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 marginalised when he was left out of the new interim government that took power on 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,” said Iraq’s chief investigating judge Zuhair al-Maliky.

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,” said White House spokeswoman Suzy DeFrancis.

The warrants accused Ahmad Chalabi of counterfeiting old Iraqi dinars, which were removed from circulation after the ousting of Saddam’s regime last year.

Iraqi police backed by US 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 yesterday but promised to return to Iraq to face the allegations.

“I’m now mobilised 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 yesterday, 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 organisations, with reports on Saddam’s purported weapons of mass destruction programmes.