Posted on 04/03/2003 4:07:10 AM PST by kattracks
U.S. says no knowledge of missing Iraqi ex-general
COPENHAGEN, April 3 (Reuters) - The U.S. embassy in Denmark said on Thursday it knows nothing about the whereabouts of a former Iraqi army chief suspected of war crimes who disappeared from his Danish home last month.
Nizar al-Khazraji, suspected of crimes against Kurds in the 1980s, vanished on March 17 despite being under a court order to remain in the country. He had been living in Denmark since 1999.
In a letter to U.S. Ambassador Stuart Bernstein, Denmark's Justice Minister Lene Espersen asked on Wednesday for any information on his disappearance.
"If Khazraji has indeed left the country the embassy has no knowledge of how he did so or his whereabouts," a spokesman from the U.S. embassy in the Danish capital told Reuters.
In the letter, Espersen cited several Danish newspaper articles suggesting the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency may have been involved in his disappearance, which happened just three days before the start of the U.S.-led war against Iraq.
One theory was that Khazraji had escaped with the aim of returning there.
"It has also been proposed, however, that he escaped with the assistance of authorities of foreign countries or that he was even abducted by such authorities," Espersen wrote.
"In this connection, the Central Intelligence Agency has been mentioned in several articles," she said.
Khazraji was head of Iraq's armed forces from 1987 to 1990. He fled to Jordan in 1995 and four years later applied for political asylum in Denmark.
He was denied asylum as immigration authorities thought it likely he was involved in chemical weapon attacks on Kurds in northern Iraq in the late 1980s. But he was allowed to stay in Denmark under special rules applied to those thought to be at serious risk if they returned home.
Khazraji had been under investigation by Danish authorities for his alleged crimes since 2001. He had surrendered his passport and had to report to police three times a week in his home town of Soro, south of Copenhagen.
04/03/03 07:02 ET
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