Posted on 12/19/2005 5:04:42 AM PST by TrebleRebel
'Dr Germ' and 'Mrs Anthrax' released from Iraqi jail 19/12/2005 - 12:48:51
Notorious Saddam-Hussein-era officials have been released from jail in Iraq and some have already left the country, an Iraqi lawyer said today.
A legal official in Baghdad said between 24 and 25 top former officials in Saddam Hussein’s government have been freed, including Rihab Taha, known as Dr Germ, and Huda Salih Ammash, known as as Mrs Anthrax.
The Iraqi lawyer, Badee Izzat Aref, said some of those released were his clients.
“The release was an American-Iraqi decision and in line with an Iraqi government ruling made in December 2004, but hasn’t been enforced until after the elections in an attempt to ease the political pressure in Iraq,” Aref said.
Iraqi officials and the US military did not immediately confirm that information.
Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson, the spokesman for the US-led Multinational Force, did say that US officials on Saturday released eight people formerly designated as high-value detainees, after a board process found they were no longer a security threat.
No charges had been filed against the eight, Johnson said. He would not identify them.
The legal official in Baghdad, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue, said those released also included Hossam Mohammed Amin, head of the weapons inspections directorate; Aseel Tabra, an Iraqi Olympic Committee official under Saddam Hussein’s late son Odai; General Dhiaa Maher al-Tikriti; Ibrahim al-Ani, an intelligence official; and Hamid al-Janabi, a prison director.
Like you, I have doubts the anthrax attacks were carried out by the fanatically religious al-Qaeda (though I suppose one could not rule out a secular "surrogate".)
My opinion is based,in part, on the notes enclosed in the letters.Putting "Allah is great" at the bottom of the note would be unthinkable to one who was devout.
A note written by a devout terrorist would start out with something like: "In the name of Allah the merciful and compassionate..."
I do actually think that "Islamists" at least determined the timing of 9/11 and the initial anthrax mailing. The conventional story is that Atta chose the date and then phoned Hamburg to keep them in the loop, and I've noted before that 9/11 is the Egyptian Christian new year, while 9/18 (when the first anthrax letter was mailed) was the Jewish new year in 2001. It seems like a variation on the abortive "millennium plot" of January 2000.
By the way, have you noticed that lately there's been almost a total news blackout on the so-called "Amerithrax" investigation, and the Steven Hatfill and Maureen Stevens lawsuits? There must be things going on those cases, but the coverage has dropped to pretty much nil.
Occam sez: It means these two had zilch-nada rôle of responsibility vis-a-vis the anthrax letters in year '01. The US govt would never have freed them, had they been a guiding force. Never.
Why? Above all, the moral hazard, the lesson to others.
If a trial would have revealed too much as some have propposed, then the US would have held them indefinitely or they would have desappeared.
Quizzically interesting theorising.
Have you any raison underlying this consideracion?? Evidence albeit even circumstancial and remote??
Wow. So none of these people were murderers?
Excuse me, but I find that very hard to believe.
I couldn't care less if they are "no longer a security threat".
Well, Porton Down labelled at least one Ames culture as "10-32", which the American researcher Martin Hugh-Jones managed to interpret as "October 1932", the month of Iraq's independence from Britain. In August 1988, there was an "International Workshop on Anthrax" in England, attended by Rihab Taha's supervisor, Nasser Hindawi, after which he started procuring large quantities of biological growth medium from a British company; and that was the month in which Iran agreed to a ceasefire with Iraq. David Kelly appears to have been Porton Down's head of microbiology at the time of the conference, he led UNSCOM's subsequent efforts to expose the existence of an Iraqi biowarfare program, and he ended up "dead in the woods" just after the British media started hounding him for the inside story of the 2003 war. I suspect he knew too much for someone's liking.
Occam is correct. If either of these 2 even had a tiny connection with the 2001 anthrax attacks, even if they knew recipes similar to the one used in preparing the stuff, the US government would have locked them up and thrown away the key. I'm afraid it is the behavior of a zealot to try and reason otherwise.
We must look elsewhere to find those responsible.
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