Camp as Saliyah (Qatar): US forces captured a senior Ba'ath Party official on the US
most-wanted list, US Central Command said on April 18.
Samir Abd al-Aziz al-Najim was handed over to US troops by Iraqi Kurds near the
Northern city of Mosul overnight, brigadier general Vincent Brooks said.
Al-Najim was the Ba'ath Party regional command chairman for East Baghdad and was the
four of clubs on the 55-card deck that US officials handed out to help American
forces to identify wanted Iraqi officials. He was Minster of Oil until earlier this
year and was Saddam Hussein's Chief of Staff for several years after the 1991 Gulf
war.
It was the second straight day that US officials announced the capture of a
significant Iraqi official. On April 17, US forces grabbed Barzan Ibrahim Hasan al-
Tikriti, Saddam's half-brother and a former head of Iraqi intelligence.
Al-Najim is a Sunni Arab from Baghdad and a veteran Ba'ath Party member who took
part, along with Saddam, in an assassination attempt against Premier Abdel Karim
Qassem in 1959. Al-Najim had served as Iraq's Ambassador to Egypt, Turkey, Spain and
Moscow and was a top insider among the top coterie around Saddam.
"We think we have someone here – all those people on that list of 55 have
information on the inner workings of the regime – that relates to weapons of mass
destruction, that relates to terrorism," Brooks told reporters.
US forces raided a house on April 16 looking for al-Najim, but found no one in the
building after breaking down the door. Al-Najim was replaced without explanation as
acting Oil Minister earlier this month by lieutenant general Amer Mohammed Rashid,
who retired from the job in January.
Agencies
