SUPPORT FREE REPUBLIC
|
|
|
 |
FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
|
|
|
|
Posted on 01/18/2003 4:09:42 PM PST by blam
UN team 'acted like Mafia', says Iraqi scientist
By Hamza Hendawi in Baghdad
19 January 2003
An angry Iraqi scientist accused UN weapons inspectors yesterday of using his wife's illness in a "Mafia-like" attempt to lure him abroad for interrogation about Baghdad's nuclear programmes. "Never, never will I leave my country," he said.
Faleh Hassan, a physicist who received his doctorate at Edinburgh University, was one of two scientists whose homes were visited on Thursday by inspectors. It was the first unannounced visit to private residences as the US increased pressure on the UN teams to try to take scientists abroad for questioning about possible prohibited weapons-building by the Iraqis.
Speaking yesterday about the visit, Dr Hassan said he had not been at home when the inspectors arrived, but that his wife's high blood pressure had worsened when she discovered the inspectors and their cars around the house. He returned later and took the experts to a field outside Baghdad. Journalists watched them jointly examining what appeared to be a man-made mound, whose significance was unclear. A senior Iraqi official said later that the field was part of a farm Dr Hassan sold in 1996.
The 55-year-old physicist, once associated with Iraq's nuclear programme, said that during the visit, when an accompanying Iraqi official briefly left his side, a female UN inspector offered to arrange for him to leave Iraq as an "escort" for his ailing wife, for whom treatment would be arranged for kidney stones, diabetes and high blood pressure.
Dr Hassan said he refused the offer, calling it "Mafia-like behaviour". He said he would not leave even if instructed to do so by his government.
Earlier on Thursday Dr Hassan, director of the Al-Razi military industrial site, emerged from his home after a six-hour UN search, carrying a box packed with documents. After the trip to the field, he, the UN team and Iraqi officials went to a Baghdad hotel, where the inspectors intended to photocopy the material. There, he said, they tried to renege on a commitment to give him copies, and he stood his ground until after dawn. Finally, they relented and returned copies to him.
He called them "old documents, not worth photocopying", but yesterday the head of the International Atomic Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, said they appeared to be related to laser enrichment.
Under a tough new UN sanctions regime, inspectors are allowed to speak to Iraqi scientists in private and even take them outside the country for interviews – which Washington hopes will prompt them to reveal hidden arms programmes.(AP)
|
|
|
|
|
FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
|
|
|
|
I get the sense that he spilled his guts to the UN. Just poured his little heart out, then did this interview to avoid a visit from one of Saddam's brothers-in-law.
That would imply "efficiency", something which I cannot conceptually associate with the U.N.
And risk it being leaked to our media, and then having his wife attended to by the regime's professional rapists? Not a chance. Read a few chapters from almost any book on Iraq or Saddam published in the last 20 years ago to get the astounding story of what really goes on over there.
President Bush did not call North Korea, Iran, and Iraq the axis of evil without AMPLE evidence for each one. These scientists are in the modern world when taking to Blix's dummies, but its back to something worse than the middle ages right after.
Perhaps something good is coming from the inspections!
If the mafia was in the business of giving people free medical treatment, I don't think the gov't would have cracked down on them so hard, and I don't think the word "mafia" would carry such negative connotations.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.