US-Backed Iraqi Government Retracts Claim Izzat Ibrahim Captured

Mon Sep 6, 2004 09:14 AM ET

By Andrew Marshall BAGHDAD (Reuters) -

US-Backed Iraqi interim government said on Monday it had not captured the most wanted Saddam Hussein aide, in an embarrassing climbdown a day after top officials reported he had been seized in a raid by Iraqi forces.

In another blow to the government and U.S. forces, a car bomb killed seven American marines and three Iraqi National Guardsmen on the outskirts of the city of Falluja.

It was the deadliest single attack on U.S. forces in five months, and brought the official Pentagon U.S. death toll for the Iraq war to at least 985.

The government's statement that it had not seized Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, who was the vice president of Iraq, came after 24 hours of confusion.

The Interior Ministry said tests had showed that a man in Iraqi custody was not Izzat Ibrahim.

"The person that has been arrested, after appropriate medical tests, was not al-Douri but somebody related to him, who is also wanted by the state," the ministry said.

On Sunday, the Defense Ministry and two Iraqi ministers said Izzat Ibrahim had been captured near the town of Tikrit, Saddam's former powerbase, only to be contradicted by other officials.

The two ministers gave a detailed account of how Ibrahim had been captured after a battle in which 150 of his followers were killed or captured when they tried to thwart his arrest.

But the regional National Guard commander in Tikrit, and U.S. forces in the area, said they knew nothing about any such battle and had no information on Ibrahim's capture.

BLOW TO CREDIBILITY

The confusion raised questions about the effectiveness and unity of US-backed Iraq's interim government as it prepares for national elections in January and tries to crush the Iraqi uprising and tackle a wave of kidnappings. Mustafa Alani, senior consultant at the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center, said the confusion stemmed from a lack of collective leadership in the government, which is made up of members of several ethnic, religious and political groups.

"For Iraqis, it must have a psychologically negative effect on the credibility of the government," he said.

There was no immediate explanation from the government on how so many top officials had been so wrong on the reported capture. It was the second time the government has had to make a major retraction since it took over formal sovereignty in June.

Last month the government said police had entered a shrine in Najaf without a shot being fired to recapture it from Shi'i militiamen holed up inside. The report turned out to be false and the uprising in Najaf did not end until the following week, when Iraq's most revered cleric brokered a peace deal.

The government did get a boost on Monday from news that five foreign hostages had been released.

Jordan's foreign minister said four kidnapped drivers -- three from Jordan and one from Sudan -- were freed on Monday. Ankara said a Turkish driver had also been freed by a separate group after his firm pledged to stop working in Iraq.

France said on Monday there were indications two French hostages held in Iraq would be freed and a Muslim negotiator said talks over their release were in the "delivery phase."

Fouad Alaoui, a member of a French Muslim delegation just back from Iraq, said: "I am of the view that the hostages are no longer in the hands of their first kidnappers but rather in the hands of the Iraqi resistance."

Journalists Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot were seized on Aug. 20 by a militant group called the Islamic Army in Iraq, which demanded Paris scrap a law banning Muslim headscarves in state schools. France refused the demand.

(Additional reporting by Omar Anwar and Suzannah Woods in Baghdad, Paul Carrel in Paris and Alistair Lyon in Amman)

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