Ayham Alsammarae, Iraq’s slimy ex-Minister of Electricity under the Bremer and Allawi administrations, who had escaped from an Iraqi prison by hiring an American security company to break him out back in December 2006, has resurfaced in the Jordanian capital Amman where he gave a press conference today saying, among other things, that he hoped that the insurgency in Iraq “would continue [against U.S. occupation] and avenges the Iraqi people.”
Alsammarae, an Iraqi-American Chicagoan, added during remarks carried by Radio Sawa (Arabic link) that he had contributed the maximum allowable of $2,300 to Barack Obama’s campaign. But there’s another Obama link to Alsammarae: while serving as electricity minister Alsammarae had been involved in brokering deals in the Iraqi electricity sector for Antoin Rezko, Obama’s long-term friend and patron. Rezko is the Syrian-American hustler who was convicted of fraud in an Illinois court on the day that Obama secured the Democratic nomination.
Alsammarae had been appointed minister under the Coalition Provisional Authority upon the recommendation of senior State Department officials who were involved in Iraqi affairs at the time. After leaving office upon Allawi’s election loss, Alsammarae reinvented himself as a mediator between insurgent groups and the U.S. ambassador to Iraq at the time Zalmay Khalilzad, who in turn arranged for Alsammarae, a onetime Republican Party fundraiser and activist in Arab-American circles, to meet with senior Bush administration officials. He was arrested by Iraqi police in Baghdad soon afterwards, an act that Alsammarae, a Sunni Arab, claimed was motivated by sectarian animosity.
Alsammarae escaped from prison after facing multiple corruption charges brought against him by Iraq’s Public Commission for Integrity; he was sprung from jail by hired U.S. mercenaries and left Iraq on a forged Chinese passport, he flew out to Amman on a private jet almost certainly with the knowledge and connivance of some U.S. intelligence officials. He returned to his multi-million dollar mansion in Chicago and, save for a few press interviews here and there, stayed under the radar. But Alsammarae seems to have been a beneficiary of the Amnesty Law that was recently passed by the Iraqi parliament, which was a benchmark for progress actively pushed for by Senate Democrats in Washington DC, and he’s eagerly touting his return to Iraqi politics, as he did in today’s press conference.
In an astounding and blatantly treasonous assertion for a U.S. citizenship holder, he stated that “the [insurgency] in Iraq is a legitimate resistance [movement] and it is against occupation and any resistance in the world against occupation is considered legitimate, and I hope that the [insurgency] continues and avenges the Iraqi people and I look forward to expanding its political agenda.”
I know there’s free speech and all, but isn’t calling for more attacks on U.S. troops a violation of sorts? Isn’t it ethically reprehensible? If Alsammarae’s citizenship can’t be revoked, can’t he be prosecuted on something else?
I’ve heard that Alsammarae allegedly fled Chicago because the authorities were going to get him on tax evasion. I guess his resemblances to Al Capone’s lifestyle—something that Alsammarae once boasted of in a press interview—go all the way.
Now, he wants more insurgent attacks on U.S. troops. What a slime-bucket, but he’s the same slime-bucket that I’ve always thought he was, from the days before the war when he opportunistically hopped onto the anti-Saddam bandwagon when it began revving up for real.
I had seen part of Alsammarrae’s General Intelligence Directorate file back in Baghdad, and he’s identified as a snitch that had worked for the Saddam regime while he was a student in the 1970s, reporting on the political activities and utterances of fellow Iraqi students then pursuing their degrees in the UK.
In another vein, Alsammarrae also tells Radio Sawa that he’s contributed money to the Obama campaign. I wonder how Obama would react to a paycheck and an endorsement from ex-con buddy of Rezko’s who is now braying for more American soldiers to be killed.
Alsammarrae claimed that he was on his way back to Iraq after being let off the legal hook under the amnesty law, and that he is set to re-join Ayad Allawi’s political coalition.