Home > Error over Saddam deputy
by Rory McCarthy in Baghdad
Officials from Iraq’s new government were left embarrassed last night after mistakenly announcing the capture of Saddam Hussein’s deputy, the most senior figure from the regime still on the run.
A defence ministry spokesman announced that US troops and Iraqi National Guard forces had arrested Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri in a violent gunbattle outside the central city of Tikrit.
Wael Abdul-Latif, a minister of state in the new government, told Reuters it was 75% to 90% certain that the man was Mr Douri, 62.
Mr Abdul-Latif said a large crowd of gunmen loyal to Mr Douri tried to intervene to stop the arrest, but that at least 70 of them were killed and 80 captured in the operation. The arrest happened as the suspect attended a medical clinic close to Mr Douri’s home village of Ad Dawr.
Ibrahim Janabi, a senior information official in the government and the deputy in the party of the prime minister, Ayad Allawi, had also insisted their news was accurate. However, within hours, the US-led coalition denied it had Mr Douri in custody.
Iraq’s defence minister, Hazim al-Shalaan, said later the reports about Mr Douri’s capture were baseless.
"We don’t have any information regarding this issue. What has been said of a statement by the defence ministry is baseless," he told Lebanon’s LBC television channel.
The error was all the more embarrassing because Iraqi officials chose to break the news to al-Hurra, the new, US-funded satellite channel which was intended to bring a more reliable and credible news service to the Arab world.
· Saddam and his top aides will go on trial "within weeks", Iraqi’s minister of state, Kasim Daoud, told a news conference in Kuwait City yesterday.