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More than 310 Iraqi scientists are thought to have perished at the hands of Israeli secret agents in Iraq since fall of Baghdad to US troops in April 2003, a seminar has found. The seminar, held in Cairo, was attended by politicians, journalists and experts with an interest in current Iraqi affairs. The experts said they had detected an organized campaign aimed at “liquidating Iraqi scientists” in the past 18 months and most of them pointed the finger at the Israeli secret police service, the Mossad. The organizers said their aim was to highlight the plight of Iraqi scientists particularly...

The Iraqi physicist who ran his country's uranium enrichment program says that Saddam Hussein continued to fund efforts to develop nuclear weapons right up until the U.S. invasion in March 2003. ... In an interview with WABC Radio's John Gambling, the Iraqi centrifuge scientist said he was ordered to keep his nuclear bombmaking research concealed from U.N. weapons inspectors.

WASHINGTON — On most days now, Mahdi Obeidi rides his new mountain bike, plays with his grandkids and works on getting a U.S. patent for technology he originally developed to build a nuclear bomb for Saddam Hussein. Obeidi, who headed Hussein's uranium enrichment program until it was shut down in 1991, is the only Iraqi weapons scientist that the CIA is known to have brought to the United States after the invasion last year. The CIA also flew eight of his family members here in August 2003 and secretly set them up in three adjoining apartments in a leafy Virginia...

The dangers of Baghdad and a shortage of cash have set back the U.S. effort to put Iraqi weapons scientists to work rebuilding their country and keep them off the global job market for makers of doomsday arms. To steer them to civilian projects and training, the State Department had planned a dozen workshops and seminars for hundreds of idled specialists from Iraq's old nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs, beginning in the first half of 2004. But the department got no new funds for the program, and none of these plans has gotten off the ground, nine months after...

What was really going in Iraq before the American invasion last year? Iraq's nuclear weapons program was on the threshold of success before the 1991 invasion of Kuwait - there is no doubt in my mind that we could have produced dozens of nuclear weapons within a few years - but was stopped in its tracks by United Nations weapons inspectors after the Persian Gulf war and was never restarted. During the 1990's, the inspectors discovered all of the laboratories, machines and materials we had used in the nuclear program, and all were destroyed or otherwise incapacitated.

Sep. 26, 2004 21:39 Syria seeking to oust Iraqi nuclear scientists By DOUGLAS DAVIS Syria is making desperate efforts to persuade Iran to accept a group of 12 Iraqi nuclear scientists and their families who had sought refuge in Damascus before the US-led coalition toppled Saddam Hussein. Quoting Western intelligence officials, the London-based Sunday Telegraph reported that Syrian President Bashar Assad fears that the US will use the presence of the Iraqi scientists as a pretext to target Syria and he is desperate to find a new home for them. The possibility of moving the Iraqi scientists to Iran, a...

AN IRAQI scientist-turned-author says the most significant pieces of his country’s dormant nuclear programme were buried under a lotus tree in his backyard, untouched for more than a decade before the US-led invasion in 2003.But their existence, Dr Mahdi Obeidi writes in a new book, is evidence that the international community should remain vigilant as other countries try to replicate Iraq’s successes before the 1991 Gulf war to develop components necessary for a nuclear weapon. In The Bomb in my Garden, Dr Obeidi details Saddam’s quest for a nuclear bomb: "Although Saddam never had nuclear weapons at his disposal, the...

The US has dismissed reports from Iraq's justice ministry that one of two female scientists held in a US-run prison was to be released. A US source told the BBC that both prisoners were in the physical and legal custody of the Americans and would not be freed imminently. Militants have reportedly killed two American hostages and are threatening to kill a third, Briton Kenneth Bigley. They had demanded the release of all Iraqi women held in US-run prisons. The US says it is only holding two women prisoners - Rihab Rashid Taha and Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash - that...

MAHMUDIYA, Iraq, Sept 5 (AFP) - An Iraqi nuclear scientist has been assassinated in the Sunni Muslim insurgent bastion of Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, his brother told AFP Sunday. Mohammed Toki Hussein al-Talakani, who had practised nuclear physics since 1984, was shot dead on Saturday as he was driving in Mahmudiya, Alaa Toki Hussein said. The 40-year-old scientist lived in the small town of Al-Kifl, some 100 kilometres (60 miles) south of the capital. Another man was killed in the town on Sunday during clashes between insurgents and Iraqi forces, while a woman was also wounded, the head of the...

Anti-coalition forces have killed a prominent Iraqi chemical-weapons scientist whom U.S. investigators were questioning at Abu Ghraib prison, in an attempt to unravel the mysteries of Saddam Hussein's arsenal.     The scientist's death is not the first such killing, and it has some U.S. analysts wondering whether there is a pattern and also whether the Iraqi insurgents had incredibly good intelligence and a deadly aim -- or were just lucky.     Last spring, according to two defense officials, the United States detained an Iraqi scientist who was active in the nation's development of chemical weapons.     The man, whom the sources declined to...

Former Iraqi Oil Minister Surrenders 16 minutes ago By NIKO PRICE, Associated Press Writer BAGHDAD, Iraq - Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s former oil minister, a trusted adviser who earlier oversaw Iraq (news - web sites)'s top-secret missile programs, has surrendered to U.S.-led forces, the U.S. Central Command said Tuesday. AP Photo (AP Video) Latest news: · U.S. Soldiers Fire at Iraqi Protesters AP - 6 minutes ago · Former Iraqi Oil Minister Surrenders AP - 16 minutes ago · Last Soldier Missing in Iraq Found Dead AP - 27 minutes ago Special Coverage   Amer Mohammed Rashid, known...

The physicist who ran Iraq's nuclear weapons program for 25 years before the U.S. liberation claimed on Wednesday that Saddam Hussein gave up his nuclear ambitions in 1991 - even though the Iraqi dictator maintained a 500-ton stockpile of uranium and kept his nuclear research team intact right up until March 2003. In his first-ever broadcast interview, Jaffar Dhia Jaffar told the BBC that Saddam's al Tuwaitha nuclear weapons research facility was heavily damaged in the first Gulf War. "Everything was destroyed, such that the program couldn't be restarted at the time at all, and it never restarted," he claimed....

Saddam Hussein gave up all of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War, the scientist who headed his nuclear program, Jaffar Dhia Jaffar, said in a BBC interview on Wednesday. "There was no capability. There was no chemical or biological or any what are called weapons of mass destruction," said Jaffar in what BBC television called his first-ever broadcast interview. Speaking in Paris, where he now lives, Jaffar - who ran Saddam's nuclear program for 25 years - said there was "no development" of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons "at any time after 1991"....

While the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded on Friday that Saddam Hussein didn't have much in the way of weapons of mass destruction, its conclusions on Iraq's nuclear weapons program weren't quite the clean bill of health that the media have suggested they were. For instance, according to the report's "Overall Conclusions" section, "Iraq was procuring dual use equipment that had potential nuclear applications." What's more, the Committee found that "Iraq had kept its cadre of nuclear weapons personnel trained and in positions that could keep their skills intact for eventual use in a reconstituted nuclear program." To be sure, the...

Another university professor murdered Baghdad, Iraq Press, May 11, 2004 – The body of a missing university professor has been found in the outskirts of Baghdad. Dr. Abdulsamia al-Janabi was abducted following a row at Mustansiriya University over the distribution of leaflets and placards in the campus. Janabi was dean of the Science College at the University and one of the country’s top scientists. He wanted to distance his college from the current political wrangling in the country. University campuses in Iraq have turned into arenas for the various political factions to propagate their ideas. Janabi ordered all political placards...

<p>In the year since Saddam Hussein was deposed, insurgents have killed nine former Iraqi weapons officials. All had been questioned by the Iraq Survey Group (ISG); at least two had been cooperating with it. Last October, ISG head David Kay said that one scientist was killed because "he was engaged in discussions with us." The most recent victim was Majid Hussein Ali, a well-known nuclear scientist. He took two bullets to the back in February.</p>

The Iraqi scientist ASIO chose to ignore April 1, 2004 he Iraqi scientist ASIO chose to ignore said that hundreds of chemicals and chemical weapons, including missiles and artillery shells, had been secretly stockpiled to deal with internal dissent. "They were reserved for emergencies such as another Shiite uprising. They could have been moved after I escaped Iraq, I cannot say for sure, but I doubt that. These places took years to build." Rashid, who was issued with a temporary protection visa by the Refugee Review Tribunal in October 2000, said he had offered to identify the bunkers in the...

Congressman Steve Buyer was interviewed by Judge Napolitano on Fox and Friends this morning. He says that NINE important Iraqi scientists have been assassinated by remnants of the old regime.Buyer says that Kay was aware of it, but was reluctant to connect the dots. He says he doesn't know how aware Bremer is, but that he felt it was time to go public with this information, and perhaps offer scientists a witness protection program.

<p>A Republican congressman says U.S. arms inspectors need to make the public better aware that Iraqi insurgents are assassinating scientists who could hold the key to Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.</p> <p>Like Mr. Buyer, U.S. officials are wondering why Saddam loyalists are killing his weapons scientists if the Iraqi dictator did not possess weapons of mass destruction.</p>

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"/> March 31, 2004 Iraq Arms Inspector Says Search Is a TangleBy DOUGLAS JEHL ASHINGTON, March 30 — The new chief weapons inspector in Iraq told Congress on Tuesday that a lack of cooperation from ousted Iraqi officials was thwarting American efforts to untangle the many remaining mysteries surrounding Iraq's suspected illicit weapons program. In the public version of testimony delivered behind closed doors to two Senate committees on Tuesday, the inspector, Charles A. Duelfer, acknowledged that American inspectors had still not found any evidence of an illicit arsenal. But he seemed less inclined...